


Forever Wanting More

by stormandstarlight



Series: The End of All Things [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But tells himself he does, Canon Rewrite, Competent Jaskier | Dandelion, Fugitive Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Geralt's Extra Trials, It wasn't supposed to be, Jaskier doesn't want to be a witcher, M/M, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Slow Burn, Sort Of, Witcher Jaskier | Dandelion, Witcher Politics, but I guess that's where we're fucking going, canon events, initially canon adjacent, to a point and then it's, which is now apparently a thing, witcher biology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:55:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24400183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormandstarlight/pseuds/stormandstarlight
Summary: Geralt has always been a little afraid of losing control. And after what happened the last time, it's not an unreasonable worry, one which the Council shares. He's been watched since he left Kaer Morhen, but he's always been... perfect. Kept himself in control, never done anything to create a reason to come after him.And then he meets a girl. A girl with a grudge against a sorcerer, who asks him to give her her revenge. And he fucks it up worse than anything else in his life.---Julian has always told himself that he doesn't mind being a Witcher. It's not like he's got another choice, after all. But when the Council asks him to take down a half-feral fugitive, he starts to think that might not be true anymore.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: The End of All Things [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945930
Comments: 198
Kudos: 273





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Woohoo, witcher!Jaskier fic!  
> This fic has taken over my life, lately, and I love it. It's probably going to be a long one, so strap in!  
> Tags, warnings, characters, etc. will be subject to change as I write more.

**BOOK ONE**

Sometimes witchers go bad.

That’s just. . . the truth. The mutations wreak havoc on hormones, and sometimes they do more than that, messing up the boys’ minds, twisting perceptions until they go screaming mad, strung out on adrenaline until they try to kill everything around them. 

Sometimes they lose their ability to think, becoming little more than an animal, and while they’re not always dangerous like that, it’s not a pleasant existence. Ends in tragedy more often than not, and not always just for the afflicted. 

Sometimes they just get power-drunk, too used to fear masquerading as respect, too used to being able to kill every human in a village with ease, and they go bad, same as kings and lords and politicians do. 

Sometimes . . .

It’s rare. It’s really fucking rare. Most of the time, if the mutations are going to mess around with a boy’s mind, it shows up in the years after the Trial, when everything’s still in flux, shifting, settling, turning from child to adult. Most of the time, if it hasn’t happened by twenty-five, it’s not going to happen at all and everyone can breathe easy.

But _rare_ doesn’t mean _nonexistent_ , and sometimes witchers go _feral_ , out there on the Path. They lose their minds, or they end up consumed by rage, or they turn into a scared, beaten-down animal. Either way, taking the mind away from a highly-trained, heavily-armed, inhuman killing machine never ends well. Especially when there isn’t the structure of a school around to contain them, a training master to recognize the signs and take action before everything spirals out of control. 

If they go feral on the Path, they have to be put down. Always. No choices, no exceptions, no quarter, no mercy. 

* * *

Those first moments, there in the blood-soaked dirt of Blaviken Square, Geralt is just numb, from the adrenaline still pounding through his veins, blotting out everything else under the white-rushing urge to _move_ , to _kill_ , from the shock of seeing her body dead in the dirt, from the realization of the horrible mistake he’d just made. He barely feels the stones pounding against his back, although instinct prompts him to lift his arm and shield his face. Not even Marilka’s rejection, bitter hatred from the first fully human person who hadn’t been _scared_ of him in a _long_ time, who’d even started to _accept_ him, really registers. It all just smooths out into _hurt_.

He stands up, makes his way through the terrified villagers, even as stones thump against his back (he’ll have bruises there for _days_ , and maybe a cracked rib or two), and leaves Blaviken.

Roach is where he left her, all of his armor and gear neatly packed away, and he takes her by the reins and leads her away from the town, still numb to the bone.

And they walk. 

He ignores the strain on his back, the creak of fractured ribs, and just-- walks. Away from the town, avoiding the main roads, wandering through the swamp and muddy, soggy trails where the ground is so damp it’s like wading through a stream. He needs new boots, he notes idly, these ones are beginning to wear thin and leak a little bit. Or that might just be the fact they’d been soaked through only a few days earlier. Either way, his feet are cold. 

He walks.

Roach snorts, loudly, and pulls him towards the side of the trail. The ground’s dried out while he’s been walking; he left the swamp without noticing. He didn’t notice a _lot_ of things, apparently -- the sun’s already set, or is just about to, given the dim blue quality of the light. Roach, being the wonderful, intelligent horse she is, has pulled him off the trail towards a large tree, ringed by grass and a carpet of needles. A decent spot for camping on, even if it isn’t a warm bed in an inn and a hot meal.

He doesn’t think he’ll be welcome in inns for a long time, not after what he’s done.

He sets up camp mechanically, not talking to Roach for once, just unsaddling her, rolling out his bedroll, gathering dry (or reasonably dry) wood, lighting a fire with Igni, getting out the saddlebag with his meager traveling rations but not eating any. 

Roach is worried about him, he can tell, and isn’t that funny, giving human emotions like _worry_ to a horse. Well. If you asked any villager who was more likely to be worried between the two of them, anyone would pick the horse. Every time. Witchers don’t feel, after all.

He wonders, idly, what the _fuck_ he’s going to do now. He’s wrecked his own reputation in Blaviken, and the reputation of any other witcher that might pass through the town, but he wouldn’t want any of his brothers to run into that son of a bitch Stregobor anyways. A blessing in disguise?

Nah.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registers that he should set up protections, more than he usually does, be on the alert for _something_ , but he doesn’t acknowledge it. Doesn’t _want_ to acknowledge it.

He still doesn’t sleep that night.

* * *

Julian steps inside the sweeping grasp of the kikimora’s leg, pivots on his toes, snaps his steel sword up and around to knock back the pincers coming around for his shoulder, and brings his silver sword up from its low guard position to _gut_ the thing, slicing it open from between the very furthest pair of legs all the way up to the throat, the cut getting deeper as it goes until he rams the tip of his sword against the monster’s spine and it collapses. He twists the sword, slides it neatly between two vertebrae, and yanks it back out before the collapse of the dead kikimora can drag it out of his grip. It flops down, half-in, half-out of the deep pool where it lived, the water staining black with dark ichor.

He spends an hour or so dragging it out of the pool with Pegasus’s help, getting it onto a position where he can go for the liver, gallbladder, and ovaries, before hacking off the head with a well timed swing and hoisting it up to hook to Pegasus’s saddle. The mare whickers nervously at the smell; she’s young, newly bought and newly trained, and the only way to get a horse acclimatized to carrying around monster heads is to, well, _have them carry around monster heads_. Not like there’s a substitute.

The town is _tiny_ , barely more than a single street lined with both houses and shops, and trails leading out from several directions that undoubtedly go to farmsteads in the distance. There isn’t even an _inn_ proper, just a tavern with some room above the miniscule stable. _Julian’s_ being put up by the village healer for the night, in exchange for getting rid of the kikimora. It’s the part of his fee he always insists on; a night in the warm, a hot meal, and a bath. Doesn’t matter where, doesn’t matter how, doesn’t matter if he’s given enough coin to pay for a guaranteed night in an inn or put up by a particularly brave family; if he gets his comforts, he’ll kill the thing. Whatever the price. After all, money can only buy so much.

And the things that he wants are the kinds of things that money can only imitate, or can’t buy at all. 

So he has his three comforts to make the years a little easier, and his classic wintering grounds in the South where the innkeepers all know him by sight, and the favor of the High Council keeping him in good standing with the Viper Head, and that’s all he wants out of life. 

All he’s ever going to _get_ , certainly. 

The village head blanches when he walks into the tavern with the kikimora head hanging from one fist. He wants to laugh. He’s barely even wet, much less covered in monster ichor or blood; if she saw him after slaying a selkiemore she’d do more than blanch. Nevertheless, he hoists the head high for everyone to see, then drops it, sightless eyes turned towards her, on the table in the middle of the tavern with a dramatic flourish

“Fear not, gentle citizens, for I have slain the beast!”

The tavern, collectively, cringes.

“No? Too dramatic? Well, I suppose you can’t win everything. My coin?”

“You’ve been gone five days,” the village head says, glaring at him. 

“And? That’s five days that no one’s been eaten by a kikimora, and it takes time, you know, to find the creature, bait it, wait until I can get a good shot.”

“We had a witcher in a few years back; took out one’a them leech-things in a night.” 

Bloedzuiger, then. This place _really_ shouldn’t have been built this close to the swamp. “Ah. Must have been a different school, then. They don’t _plan_ their hunts. Has its advantages, from what I’ve heard, but,” and here he spins on his heel, deliberately displaying his silver-studded armor, the flashing pommels of his swords on his backs. Show them off, make them realize that they’re talking back to a _witcher_ of all people. “ Here we are, dead kikimora, very happily _not_ dead witcher, and no more dead children. My coin?” He recognizes what's going on, of course. They all thought he was dead, killed by the thing, and were all ready to not have to pay him anything. He recognizes the symptoms; he’s been hit by them in the past. Generally happens when you take longer than a night or two to kill whatever-it-is, but he’s not going to give up his careful planning and lack of scars for an easier time getting paid. Because he generally _does_ get paid, in the end. It just takes a little more convincing. 

The village head just squints at him until he sticks out a hand and gives a little wiggle of his fingers, the ichor and swamp water sticking to his gloves glistening in the low light in the tavern. That gets her to toss him the little pouch full of coin, and he bows again, scoops up the head, and leaves the tavern behind.

Once Pegasus is safely bedded down in the tavern’s stables (hard to call them stables, really, there’s _barely_ room for more than four horses), he makes for the village healer’s hut and the bath that’s been promised for him. He might not be one of those witchers who somehow contrive to get covered in blood and guts and ichor at every opportunity, but he still likes a warm bath to soak in after time spent tracking down something in the middle of nowhere without even a fire. 

The village healer obviously moved here from somewhere more cosmopolitan, where witchers are seen with less outright fear and more wary respect. He’s half a mind to ask her where she grew up, but the large tub full of steaming water has him groaning loud enough to make even the middle-aged healer chuckle and leave him alone to wash. 

Clean, dry, warm, full of a _really_ quite delicious fish stew, and tucked away in the healer’s guest bed, he’s in a good mood. No injuries to speak of, even, which is quite nice. Really, it’s been a good day all around. 

It’s not a-- _bad_ life, being a witcher. He’s got Gorthur Gvaed to go back to if he needs, a double dozen brothers who all work in the same general territory as he does and who he runs into every so often (even if none of them are _brothers_ like his cohort was, the way some of them are with each other), coin, a faithful horse, and a good reputation.

And the High Council’s favor and appointment, although he wouldn’t exactly call that _good_. Not with the details of that job. 

And if he wants anything else from life, well, that’s not what Destiny’s given him.

* * *

Geralt spends the night trying and failing to meditate. Here in the darkness, with nothing to do and nothing to see, his thoughts keep on inching closer and closer to that one thing he’s been trying not to think about. 

_He had to do it. No choice. She would’ve killed the entire village if he hadn’t, starting with Marilka._

_He should’ve killed Stregobor too. Or killed him first._

_It was the only choice he could’ve made._

_Was it? Or was it the mutations? Has he finally—_

_It was the only choice he saw._

_And why was that?_

He lunges to his feet with a snarl, waking Roach, who tosses her head. He goes to soothe her, grateful for the distraction from his thoughts, but she needs rest more than he does, so he leaves her be after a minute or two, going back to sitting by his bedroll in front of the dying fire.

The story at Blaviken is going to get out. The response to any witcher coming through is going to speak to that, although if he’s lucky, it won’t be connected to his name. If he gets out now, it’ll be an isolated incident ( _what if it isn’t_ ), and he’ll be able to move on before anyone can connect him back to it. 

For any other witcher, this might be fine. For Eskel or Aubry or, hell, even _Lambert_ , they’d just get dragged before Vesemir and the Wolf Council, made to explain their actions, and maybe censured a little, given a fine to pay to the school or a sentence of service. And that’d be the end of it, forgotten in five years or so. 

Because Eskel and Aubry and Lambert and all the other witchers around here are _normal_. 

And he’s not. 

He’s a fucking _freak_ , laced through with double the normal amount of mutagens, with experiments done to him that should have killed him. He’s been watched since he was twelve years old, monitored for any sign of physiological differences beyond the superficial (the eyes, the hair, the skin, the teeth), for anything they could replicate and put in other witchers. For any adverse effects of the mutations, for abnormal adrenaline reactions, for altered thinking patterns, for any sign of _ferality_. 

Signs like killing ten people in the middle of a village square for no apparent reason.

Signs like--

He can’t-- _is_ he going feral? Would he know? Is what happened in Blaviken a sign that he’s finally slipping? A sign that the hard-won control he’s been struggling to hang on to since his Trials is losing out to his mutations? A sign that he’s becoming the monster he’s always felt lurking just underneath his skin?

Maybe he should just put his silver sword to his throat and save himself the trouble of the fight. It’s only an idle thought for the moment, though he sets it aside for a time when it might not be. 

He needs to sleep if he’s going to figure this out. 

Somehow or other he ends up in his bedroll, staring up at the sky like the stars can tell him how to fix this. 

Sleep doesn’t come until the night is blue with approaching dawn


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, here we go :)  
> Sorry for such a long wait for an update, this story was fighting me.

The first witcher to pass through Blaviken after it all goes down gets to the door of the tavern before he’s met with what has to be every man in the town, some of them wielding proper weapons, some of them with pitchforks and scythes, some with nothing more than sticks and stones. When he tries to reason with them, they stone him out of town, viciously, almost more than superstition alone can account for.

It’s not an _entirely_ unexpected reaction: even in the cities, Witchers are suspect, and in the isolated villages without a river or the sea to bring trade, they’re even _hated_ , but _stonings_ are only common in the tiny villages that see a witcher once every five years or so. Blaviken may be small for a coastal town, but not nearly small enough to merit this. It has a _wizard_ , of all things, and they’re usually able to convince the people that the witchers are only there to help them!

It’s enough of a surprise to stick in the witcher’s head, and he’s thinking about it two towns over when someone comments on the bruise on his cheek, spreading dull blue-and-purple across his face and cracked cheekbone. He tells them he was run out of town, for no reason he could tell, and they respond with shock, glancing around the tavern as the entire place falls silent, all eyes on the witcher who _doesn’t know what happened in Blaviken_.

“Aren’t you all related or something?” someone asks. 

He shakes his head and mentions something about there being different training locations around the Continent so witchers don’t have to travel so much, but they don’t seem to believe him. He wouldn’t either. It’s easier to think they all come from the same place, same hellmouth or devil’s gate or wherever else witchers are supposed to spring from.

“Hmmph,” the man says, “would’ve thought you’d heard of one of your kinsmen going crazy and killing half the town.” Oh, and _that_ gets his attention, forces him to press for information while the man is clearly enjoying having a witcher hang on his every word, even as he’s terrified of said witcher, and terrified of the story he’s about to tell.

“Heard it from the town wizard myself, I did, when he came to Rathavik a week ago. A witcher wanders into town, black clothes, yellow eyes, hair as white as a man in his eighth decade but a face like a man barely married.” White hair? He might not be Wolf School, but unless he’s further out of the loop than he realized, that means Geralt of Rivia, the experiment. The _freak_. 

“So this witcher likes this girl, see, sweet little thing, pretty, _sleeps_ with her even, and then he kills her in the middle of the town square, her and a double dozen other men. Just–- boom! Dead by his blade, and he doesn’t show a _lick_ of remorse for his deeds. This girl tries to fight back against him, but he’s too strong for her to fight, so’s he puts a blade through her throat, but he puts it so she dies _slow_ , choking on her own blood.”

The entire room gives a gasp at that. They’re lapping it up, but he can tell that the storyteller _believes_ what he’s saying, that he’s genuinely afraid of what happened in Blaviken. He keeps shooting little nervous glances at the witcher listening to him, like he’s afraid he’s going to die himself. 

“And when the wizard shows up to try to save her, this _monster_ puts a blade to his throat and threatens to kill him if he doesn’t stand there and watch her die. And the wizard, he’s got no choice, he’s the only one powerful enough to stop the witcher if he keeps killing, so he stands there and watches this pretty little thing just _die_ , there in the mud. Wasn’t even married, she wasn’t, though there were a dozen men who would’ve asked. 

“And the witcher just walks out of the town, happy as you please, like he _enjoyed_ it. Like it was _fun_ for him. Geralt of Rivia,” and it _was_ Geralt, this is getting worse by the moment, “butchered half of Blaviken with a smile on his face, and I’ve no doubt he’ll do it again if he gets the chance.”

“They’re all monsters,” someone mutters from the back of the tavern, and though his voice is mushy with drink, it’s still enough of a statement to get approving mutters rolling through the patrons.

The witcher thanks the man for telling him what happened, pays the barmaid ( _with_ a hefty tip), and gets out of there as fast as he can. Any slower, any sign that he might be anything other than controlled, and he’d have been mobbed.

This is _not good_.

* * *

Vesemir is in the main courtyard, watching the oldest students drill the newest in basic swordwork, when the messenger bursts through the gates, spurring his poor horse onward even as it skids a little on the stone paving, nearly frothing at the mouth. The boy on its back might not be Wolf School, but Vesemir is more than willing to exercise his authority as training master of Kaer Morhen and give him a good dressing-down on treating his horse like that. On the Path, your mount is more often than not your only friend, and treating them bad is a sure way to get yourself hurt or _worse_.

Already, one of the middle-year students is running for the horse, reaching up to catch the reins and calm the beast as the messenger tumbles to the ground, heading straight for Vesemir. He’s young; obviously one of the boys on his errantry year for the High Council, running messages between the schools as part of his training in how to handle the world outside the keeps. Must be urgent if he’s ridden this hard.

Vesemir waits for the boy to come to him, fumbling at the pouch at his waist with tired fingers. He’s _shaking_ , breathing hard, with dark circles underneath his eyes; has he slept at _all_ since leaving Kaer Duchan?

He fumbles the scroll out and promptly drops it on the ground. With a wide-eyed, terrified look up at Vesemir, he bends down to fetch it, glancing around like he’s half-expecting a monster to jump out at him.

As he scrabbles at the stones for the scroll, never taking his eyes off of the courtyard around him and the training witchers, Vesemir gets fed up and snaps “What is it, boy?”

The boy swallows, fingers closing around the scroll, wavers, and says, tightly, “Geralt of Rivia has gone feral, sir.”

* * *

Once everything is settled down, the poor horse in the stables, the boy being fed, and his own self back up in his little office with the scroll open on his desk, _then_ Vesemir allows himself to actually _think_ about what’s happened.

The scroll begins with a tersely worded account of an event they’re already calling the Blaviken Massacre. The facts, laid out like this, are simple. Geralt of Rivia was noted entering the coastal town of Blaviken for an unidentified reason, presumed to have something to do with the dead kikimora seen on his horse. The next day, he killed an unidentified number of people (reputed to be in the double digits) for apparently no reason and left town. He did not send a message to the Wolf School or the High Council, nor has any witcher reported an encounter with him since the event. 

The scroll does acknowledge the report as hearsay, but also mentions that the witcher who brought it to their attention was stoned out of the town, an unusual experience and one that corroborates a witcher-related tragedy, and that the man who relayed the story heard it from the Blaviken wizard, who was apparently an eyewitness to the event. 

At the very end is a notification that the same message has been relayed to all six schools, along with a request for the full witcher Council to meet at Kaer Duchan. 

Well _, shit_. 

Geralt’s always been somewhat unpredictable, prone to sly, dry-humored pranks in his younger years, but Vesemir would’ve sworn on his life that he’d never do such a thing. Not after what happened to Gweld. He’s too controlled now, too careful not to let any of his emotions slip out of his grasp. 

Is that what happened? Did he lose control in the middle of a fight, with no one to calm him down afterwards? 

Vesemir doesn’t want to think it of him, doesn’t want to believe that Geralt could do something like this. Honestly, he wants to dismiss the entire thing as hearsay and get back to pounding some sense into the heads of three idiot boys who think that just because they made senior trainee they can conquer the entire world, never mind that two of them will die before they hit thirty.

But it’s _Geralt_. Which means that the High Council will be out for his blood because of this, and because he’s training master of Kaer Morhen and the most senior training master across the schools, Vesemir can’t just dismiss this out of hand. He has to take it seriously, has to consider if Geralt really has gone bad. 

Because there always is that possibility. 

* * *

Vesemir gives the message to the rest of the Wolf Council, made up of senior witchers respected enough to be given a permanent position running the school and the permanent teaching staff. Quite often, the two overlap, although Master Hubert is a notable exception. (He may be filling a valuable position, pounding history into the heads of young boys who’d much rather be hitting each other with swords, but it’s not just his students who don’t like him.)

The scroll gets passed around the big circular table in the councilroom, and everyone who reads it goes dead quiet. Vesemir hasn’t said anything beyond the statement that a message arrived from the High Council; it may be silly, but he doesn’t want to be the first to bring up what’s happened to Geralt. He might be the seniormost witcher here, but he’ll be damned if he ever _wants_ to be. 

Of course, he’s not that lucky. Mikkel, Kaer Morhen’s general liaison with the High Council (and thus below only Vesemir in rank), slides the scroll away from him and looks straight at Vesemir. 

“First of all, since Master Vesemir is known to be biased on this matter, I propose that I take up the mantle of Council Head in this matter. All agreed?” That gets a round of “aye”s, some of them eager, some of them considered, some of them outright smug. Vesemir adds his own voice to the mix. Mikkel’s right. He is biased, and the other witcher’s only been on the council for a few decades, not long enough to have known Geralt when he was in training. Not long enough to have seen the Incident. He’ll be fair, at least. “Master Vesemir, since you know Geralt so well, perhaps you’d care to give us your opinion on this matter?”

 _Shit_. “I want to say that he didn’t do this, or that it’s been wildly overexaggerated. I practically raised the boy; murdering a dozen innocents doesn’t seem like him.”

“Really? As I recall, you were present for the Incident, and in fact were one of the instructors injured attempting to contain–-”

Vesemir cuts Mikkel off with a sharp glare. “I’m not finished. Like I said, I want to say that this is false, or hearsay. But I’ve seen what he’s capable of. I’ve seen what happens when he loses control. And he might be damn good at keeping himself in check, but no man’s perfect, certainly no witcher. There’s–-” he doesn’t want to say it, “a possibility this might be true. There’s also a possibility it might happen again, or that Geralt... isn’t recoverable.”

“So what do we do?” Oskar asks, leaning forward on the table, squinting out of his one good eye. 

“Hunt the bastard down and be done with it,” Lukas suggests, inspecting the blade of one of his knives for chips or notches along the edge. He likes to put on a front of carelessness, but Vesemir knows he’s one of the most bloodthirsty, untrusting buggers around. He’s always been vehemently opposed to everything the previous Head did, including the extra Trials on Geralt. The experiments, the extra mutagens, even Geralt himself all face his wrath, and he’d like nothing more than to have every trace of those experiments wiped from the face of the earth. Including Geralt himself. 

Vesemir bristles at the suggestion, but Tobin, the herbmaster and probably the coolest head here, cuts back in. “Geralt of Rivia is a member of the Wolf School, and despite his past, he has a solid reputation among members of this school. I, for one, have fond memories of him, as do others here,” that gets Vesemir a nod, “and he is reported to be one of the best witchers currently in operation, if not _the_ best. We–-”

“That’s exactly what makes him so dangerous!” Yuri cuts in. He’s the newest to the Wolf Council, desperate to prove himself. “I’ve heard the stories of what happened while he was training; if we have to fight him, it could very well take the whole school–-”

“ _Nevertheless_ ,” Tobin cuts in, firmly if not loudly. “We cannot simply kill one of our own on hearsay. And Geralt of Rivia is one of our own.”

“He’s not even from Rivia,” Lukas quips, and Vesemir gives him his best glare, the one he reserves for students doing things that could very well get them killed _right there_. Lukas may be a touch too old to have been trained by him, but he shuts up all the same. 

“Yes, but _what do we do about it_ , is the question here,” Tobin cuts in, gentle but firm. “Because we can debate all day about whether or not Geralt is worthy of being called a member of the School of the Wolf, but that doesn’t give us a solution.”

“Bring him in,” Vesemir suggests heavily, and every head turns towards him. “Send out a witcher, someone he recognizes, and have them bring him back to Kaer Morhen for questioning. See if they can’t get someone from Blaviken as well, the wizard or another eyewitness, and get a statement from both of them. If he won’t come, the messenger will tell us why, and if he does go–-” _don’t say feral, don’t say feral_ “bad, then we can contain him here until we can decide what to do.”

Tobin nods immediately, followed by Oskar and Mikkel. With their endorsements, the rest of the Council quickly agrees, leaving only Lukas still staring at his knife.

“I still say we should kill the bastard, but it looks like I’m outvoted. Do whatever the hell you want; don’t blame me if it goes belly-side-up.”

“Are we agreed, then?” Mikkel asks, and the room, as a whole, nods. “Very well. Vesemir, who do you propose sending out to fetch Geralt?”

“Eskel, if possible. Aubry if not. They’re about his age, trained with him. He’ll recognize them and,” hopefully, “listen to them. And Eskel’s the one who calmed him down the– the first time. If anyone can get through to him, it’ll be Eskel.”

“Eskel it is. I’ll send one of the errantry boys out to find him and fetch him back to the Kaer for the mission. Now, I have a feeling that the High Council is going to want to speak to us about this; are we all agreed to defend this solution as it stands, or does it need to be changed?”

No one says anything. Mikkel nods. “Very well then. I declare this session adjourned. Back to your duties, everyone.”

As Vesemir is leaving, Tobin and Mikkel fall into step beside him. “I know how close you were with the boy. I’m sorry about this, Vesemir, really I am, but we all saw this coming. You just chose not to,” Mikkel says, very carefully looking straight ahead.

“Geralt is a good witcher and a good man,” Vesemir growls, not looking at them. 

“They’re _all_ good men, or good boys, or good witchers. That doesn’t change the fact that they’re dangerous, and not in control. They have to be dealt with.”

“Your point?”

“I’ve a kind of potion I know how to make,” Tobin cuts in, slow and gentle. “A poison strong enough to even take _him_ down, in a large enough dose. It’s scentless, tasteless, painless, he’ll never know what happened–-”

Vesemir opens up his stride to get away from Tobin. He can’t _seriously_ be talking about killing Geralt. . . ?

The way that Tobin lets him go is enough to show that he _is_.

* * *

Eskel is hard to find; last reports of him were that he was somewhere off in the far north, clearing out the villages there while the summer weather made places like Caingorn habitable. He’s not back at Kaer Morhen in the week that it takes the High Council to announce that they will be hosting a full meeting of the Witcher Council at Kaer Duchan to deal with the problem of Geralt of Rivia.

It seems a little excessive, but they’ve always been scared of Geralt, ever since the old head of the Wolf School and his head mage were determined to be insane. Ever since the Incident.

They’re not _wrong_. Even as an untrained boy, if Geralt was dangerous enough to pull that off, imagine what he’d be like as a full witcher with fifty years’ experience on the Path. And the High Council’s job is not just to police the schools, but to ensure that the reputation of witchers in general remains favorable enough to keep them from being burned at the stake. It’s a hard enough job at the best of times, dealing with the petitions from kings and queens and petty lords presuming to have some kind of authority over witchers, and with a story like Blaviken getting out, it’s going to get even harder. 

At the very least, they’re going to need to be able to say they dealt with the witcher who did it, and provide proof. 

So Vesemir packs up his armor and his swords, gives two weeks worth of detailed instructions for every single class to Oskar and Tobin, who will be taking his place while he’s gone, and walks with Mikkel, Lukas, and Ravan through the portal created by one of the High Council’s mages. 

They’re welcomed into Kaer Duchan, given dinner and baths (which don’t compare to the hot springs under Kaer Morhen, but _nothing_ can compare to the hot springs under Kaer Morhen) and rooms, and then informed that the Council will be convening in the morning, at the dawn bell. 

The High Council is made up of six members, one from each School, who have renounced their ties to the School that trained them and have, supposedly, devoted themselves to the good of all witchers on the Continent. They’re not _entirely_ ineffective, and their authority can be helpful, even, when some noble gets pissy or some such, but most of the time Vesemir just wishes they’d leave him and his alone. 

There are four members from each School: Council Head, Council Liaison, and the two senior-most members. Vesemir gives a nod to the witchers he recognizes; there are fewer and fewer of those each time he comes back.

They all take their seats, Mikkel taking Vesemir’s place as Wolf Council Head as they’d agreed upon before coming. When questioned upon it by the High Council, he repeats his statement about Vesemir being notably biased in Geralt’s favor in this case, and the Council agrees without much grumbling.

Vesemir isn’t well liked here. To be fair, he doesn’t like most of the other Council members either. He just wants to stay at Kaer Morhen and train his boys, instead of getting involved in politics. 

The Council is formally opened, and then they’re right onto the problem of Geralt without anything else in the way. 

“Master Mikkel!” Samuel, formerly of the Cat School, and seniormost member and therefore de facto Head of the High Council, calls. “As Geralt of Rivia is of your school, please explain your thinking on this matter and the actions you’ve taken regarding it.”

 _Old Sammy’s gotten better at the fancytalk_ , Vesemir thinks, sourly. 

“We have determined that due to his reputation as one of the finest witchers of the Wolf School, the best action to take is to bring him back to Kaer Morhen, along with a witness from Blaviken, and determine the truth of what happened from his own mouth. Based on that information, we would decide if he truly had... lost control and needed to be dealt with.”

“A _fine_ idea!” Declan, formerly of the Griffins, declares, falsely hearty. He _knows_ something, but Vesemir can’t tell what. “And is he at Kaer Morhen _now_?”

“Er... no. We also determined that the best person to bring him in would be his childhood friend, given that said childhood friend is known to be able to calm him out of one of his... rages. Eskel is proving to be difficult to track, unfortunately, although we have no doubt he _will_ be located soon.”

“It appears we think upon similar lines, Master Mikkel,” Samuel puts in. “We’ve proposed the same action, although we seem to have had more success, given that we didn’t rely upon a witcher with unknown whereabouts to track down a highly dangerous experimental subject. In fact, we’ve already sent a pair from the Cat School,” the Cat School Head, Daniel, grins smugly at Vesemir from across the room. Vesemir glares back, “to track him down and bring him in for an audience before the High Council. It’s been over a week and a half; they should be reaching him fairly soon.” 

So Declan knew they hadn’t found him, and was relying on their inability to fetch him back to Kaer Morhen to make a point about the High Councils’ superiority. And Declan used to be a _friend_ , before he got pulled into all the little power plays of the High Council.

Fucking _politics_. 

“We’ve also found a witness to bring in from Blaviken, the town wizard, who has agreed to appear before us today and give us his accounts of events as he saw him,” Iveth once-a-Viper says. “Master Stregobor is well known among the mage community; I trust him to give us fair judgement.” The rest of the Witcher Council murmurs at that. Vesemir definitely recognizes the name, but he’s not so sure Stregobor is as trustworthy as all that. Then again, he _is_ a paranoid old bastard. Maybe he’s just being cynical, and the mage will give them a fair and just rendition of events to help them get to the bottom of all of this.

Yeah, right, and ghoul bites don’t hurt a _bit_. 

“Now, on to other matters. Once Geralt of Rivia is safely apprehended, what should we do–-”

The door thumps open, and a man dressed all in expensive black and gold strides through, attended by two more witchers, both of the Bear School, heavy and muscular and slow.

Stregobor of the Brotherhood of Mages. _Wonderful._

“So very sorry if I’m late,” he calls, “but I had to get my affairs in order and I’m afraid Blaviken is just _devastated_ by what has happened.”

“So there _is_ property damage, then?” Iveth asks, leaning forward.

“Property damage? Oh, no, no, we were fortunate enough that we avoided that. But the town itself is _emotionally_ devastated, and I have been spending a great deal of time reassuring them that even with my esteemed self elsewhere, they will be safe from rogue witchers. I fear that the actions of your man have made them untrusting of all your kind, even those shown to be... reliable.”

 _I’ll bet_. _And you had nothing to do with that, of course._

“Tell me, what is it you gentlemen wish to know? I will do my best to relay what I saw, but I wasn’t there for the start of the fight, only the end.”

Samuel grimaces at him, but motions for him to come and stand beside the High Council’s table. “The whole story, as you remember it, starting with what you know of Geralt of Rivia’s entrance into the town.”

Stregobor gives him a perfunctory nod, turns to face the assembled witchers, and begins to talk.

“The first I heard of the witcher, he’d ridden into town looking to sell a kikimora that had been known to dwell in the swamps near the town. The alderman, however, had put out a notice for a graveir, rather than the kikimora, which was well known to the townsfolk and had not killed in quite some time.”

His delivery is polished, like he’s giving a prepared speech. Vesemir would have laid silver on it to say that he _was_ , although it wasn’t like it was unexpected. He must have known he’d been asked to tell his version of the events. 

“Although the alderman refused to buy his kikimora, I sent a young servant of mine, the girl Marilka, to fetch him to my tower, that _I_ might buy it from him. Upon reaching me, however, he refused to sell me the beast, and instead appeared to leave town. I thought that was the end of the matter, and I dismissed him from my mind. 

“Now, I didn’t find this out until well after he... left, but while he was in the tavern asking for directions to the alderman’s house, he met a girl. Renfri, was her name, a known beauty among the townsfolk--”

“Renfri? As in Renfri of Creyden?” Declan asks, leaning forwards.

Stregobor bows. “The very same, although I was given to understand that she renounced all her titles when she left home. As I understand it, she chose not to settle down into an occupation more suited for a young woman such as herself and instead led a band of mercenaries, though I have no knowledge of their intentions in Blaviken. She had a taste for adventure, I feel, which may have led her to be drawn to the Witcher Geralt.”

“ _Drawn_ , you say,” Samuel cuts in. “Drawn as in drawn to him...” He lets the sentence trail off suggestively. 

“I don’t know what their relation was, only that she was spotted leaving Blaviken alone, soon after the Witcher Geralt and headed in the same direction, and seen returning before dawn the next morning, again alone. I was also told that there was an... altercation, in the tavern, and she stood up for him against her own townsfolk. Other than that, I don’t know what happened between them.”

 _‘But I’ve got a pretty good guess’_ was left unsaid, although it rang clearly enough that nearly every witcher in the room understood what he was implying.

Vesemir wants to put his head in his hands. _Geralt, what in hell have you gotten yourself_ into _?_ Sleeping with mercenary leaders, making enemies of powerful sorcerers, supposedly slaughtering a dozen innocent villagers... He’d known from the beginning that Geralt was destined for great things, but he’d expected them to be more along the lines of killing selkiemores and saving villages. Not this. 

“Geralt returned to town much later, and was seen walking through the market with his sword unsheathed, although he wore no armor. From what I heard, he was confronted by one of Renfri’s men for some reason or other, possibly concerning what had happened the previous night. From there, he proceeded to...” the pause is played for drama, Vesemir can tell, but it’s effective all the same. “He proceeded to murder, in cold blood, nearly thirty men in the marketplace, most of them in the employ of Renfri as well, but also several innocent villagers as they attempted to flee the scene.”

 _Bullshit_. Geralt would _never_ kill a running man, not without good reason. Even during the Incident, he’d only responded to those trying to attack him, not going for the ones who’d fled, or hid from the battle. Vesemir starts to lunge to his feet to rebut the man, only to have Mikkel and Ravan, on either side, force him back down. The movement doesn’t go unnoticed by the other schools, and there are whispers and laughter from around the room, soft enough that only a witcher could hear. 

“Renfri attempted to stop him, and they fought. The battle ended with Geralt forcing her to stab herself in the throat with her own dagger, and left her to bleed out in the mud. That was when I arrived, and he immediately attempted to attack me, though I managed to prevent him from killing me. The townsfolk drove him out of town with stones, and he left, taking his horse with him. I’ve not heard anything else since, not until you gentlemen called me here to give witness.”

Samuel and Declan scowl. No self-respecting witcher wants to be called a ‘gentleman’, but they have to be nice; Stregobor is a high ranking member of the Brotherhood and _not_ someone you want as an enemy.

Iveth is the first to speak. “So you would say, without a doubt, that Geralt of Rivia was _not_ in full control of his actions at the time?”

“He was not.”

The room fills with hissed whispers, and Vesemir can’t stand it any longer. He stands, drawing every eye to him. “You said you weren’t present for the beginning of the fight. Have you any idea what might have prompted it?”

Stregobor turns to face him, disdain in every line of his body. “I fear I do not, Master...?”

“Vesemir,” Laron calls. He’s the Wolf School’s delegate to the High Council, and he’s spent most of the meeting very pointedly not looking at Vesemir. There’s been bad blood between them ever since Vesemir was appointed to Council Head, but School loyalties are strong, especially for Wolves, and he can’t just turn his back on a brother.

“Geralt’s _trainer_ ,” someone from the back of the room calls. Vesemir doesn’t react, even as laughter breaks out again among the back ranks of witchers. 

Stregobor bows again. “Master Vesemir. I was not present for the beginning of the fight, and I was told that many of the witnesses fled or were killed.”

“And you are sure that he was _entirely_ out of control of his own actions? He did not speak, offer any reasoning, give you an ultimatum of any sort?”

Stregobor tips his head at him. “Master Vesemir, are you attempting to _defend_ the man who killed _thirty people_ in my town?”

“Answer the question.” It’s a growl more than a sentence, but it gets the point across.

“He did not speak to _me_. I cannot give account to his actions before I arrived on the scene.”

“Yet you said he took his horse with him. Is that the action of a man overtaken by rage?”

“Oh, hush up, Vesemir, we all know you’re sweet on the boy!” The call comes from the Cats, although he doesn’t catch which one. The room explodes into _actual_ laughter this time, even Stregobor joining in with a demure chuckle or two.

Vesemir glowers at the room in general until Mikkel grabs him by the shoulder and drags him back down to his seat, where Ravan leans in to hiss in his ear, “I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t attempt to defend him unless you were asked to?”

“Come on, Ravan, you can’t blame him. After all, he’s _sweet_ on Geralt,” Lukas chuckles, and Vesemir is very tempted to reach back and punch him in the nose. Ravan just gives him a disapproving look, and the other witcher subsides. 

“I propose that Master Vesemir refrain from offering commentary on this matter,” Declan puts in, once the laughter has died down some, “given his known connections to the subject.”

“Seconded,” puts in Daniel of the Cats immediately, followed by the Viper Head and Samuel. Vesemir makes eye contact with Laron, and the Wolf witcher sighs, moves his gaze to the far wall, and says, ponderously, “As this is a formal council meeting, in the interest of understanding, I would request that we refer to the subject by his given name, Geralt of Rivia, rather than epithets or other nicknames.”

“Seconded,” Mikkel puts in, followed by the Bear Head.

That’s not what Vesemir was asking for, but it’s better than nothing. 

“It has been determined that Geralt of Rivia has killed, what was it, thirty?” Stregobor nods, “thirty people in the town of Blaviken, in Redania, for no apparent reason. It has also been determined that he was clearly not in control of his actions while he did it, and in fact appeared to be acting feral during the event. Have you any objections to this interpretation of the story, Master Stregobor?” Samuel says formally, standing to address the entire Council. 

“I have not.”

“Then I rule that Geralt of Rivia be declared as having lost control and possibly having gone feral.”

“Seconded,” says Iveth.

“Are there any objections to this ruling?”

“Apart from Master Vesemir,” a Crane quips, prompting a round of laughter from his Councilmates and several others. Vesemir shifts his glower to him in particular, and the Crane looks suitably cowed. 

The room is silent.

“All in favor of the ruling?”

“Aye,” says Declan, and “aye”, says Iveth, and so on it goes, down the High Council table and around the room, each School Head adding their affirmative. Mikkel abstains, but does not speak out against the ruling, and does not look at Vesemir as he does so. 

“Very well. I declare the ruling of Geralt of Rivia as out of control, possibly feral, as passed and confirmed. Sentencing shall be–-”

Laron clears his throat, loudly, and Samuel turns around to look at him. 

“As we have little information on Geralt’s actions beyond the word of the esteemed Master Stregobor who, by his own admission, was not there for the beginning of the fight and has no knowledge of his intentions,” the former Wolf starts, slowly, “I propose that we wait for him to be presented before the Council before we determine sentencing. We have, after all, already sent someone to bring him in, and it sits badly with me that we should decide the fate of one of our own without him having any say in the process. After all, for all that Master Stregobor is a fine sorcerer and a fine member of the Brotherhood, he is not a witcher, and doesn’t know our ways or our reasoning.”

Stregobor looks like he’s bitten into a piece of meat only to find it filled with maggots, but he gives Laron a nod.

“I agree,” calls out the Griffin Head, Eir. “For all his past, Geralt is still a witcher, and one held in fairly high standing at the Wolf School. It seems only fair to let him make a case for himself.”

Now _Samuel_ looks like he’s bitten into maggoty meat, but he forces a smile. “Very well. It is proposed that we postpone sentencing until Geralt of Rivia has had the chance to make a statement in his own defense before the Council. All in favor?”

That gets another round of “aye”s, and Vesemir sighs in relief. At least this way Geralt will be able to fight for himself, and maybe make it out of this alive. 

_Dammit, boy, why do you_ do _this to yourself?_

It’s Declan, not Samuel, who says “It is determined that Geralt of Rivia will be permitted to defend his actions before the Council, and then and only then will sentencing be passed. Now, unless we’ve got other pressing business, I’m hungry and Geralt isn’t here. What say we decamp until the Wolf gets brought in?”

There’s a general round of affirmatives, and everyone rises from their seats to get caught in the general crush against the doors. Mikkel rests a hand on Vesemir’s shoulder. “He has a chance, you know.”

“I know.” 

Mikkel gives him a sharp, manly pat and walks off, leaving him to think. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooooooo, yeah. Six thousand words and not a single one from the POV of either the main characters. Sorry 'bout that.  
> Geralt and Jaskier will be back next chapter, though. :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Geralt gets himself into deep shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Witcher politics, I'm sorry. At least you get some actual Geralt POV this time!

The next morning, the full Witcher Council is standing around in the main hallway, waiting for the mages to open the portals back to their keeps, when a messenger comes panting up the long stairs. He’s a younger boy to be in sixteenth year, and skinny, but his voice is powerful enough when he shouts his message to the rafters.

“You’re all needed in the Council chamber, right now! The Cats’re back!”

“The Cats” can only refer to the two Cat witchers sent out to collect Geralt, but if they’re back, why didn’t the messenger tell them Geralt was here? That’d be the more important information.

Which means that Geralt _isn’t_ here. Which means that something went wrong, because they wouldn’t come back without him, not unless something happened.

_I swear, the next time I see that boy, I’m going to shake him until some sense falls out!_

Vesemir manages to fight his way to the front of the crowd through judicious use of his age and authority and subtle use of his elbows; he may be old and (mostly) retired, but he’s not training master of Kaer Morhen for nothing. 

The High Council is already seated at their table, but there’s only one other person in the room, a younger Cat witcher with a set of scars to rival Eskel’s across his face, nearly wiping out one eye and reducing the cartilage of his nose to mush. His partner is nowhere to be found, and a sick sense of dread starts to pool in Vesemir’s guts.

Everyone takes their seats quickly, not really bothering with finding their designated tables, and Samuel rises. His face is set in a stony mask, jaw tightly clenched.

“Tell us what happened.”

The Cat nods. “Me and my partner, we’d tracked him -- Geralt -- to a sort of swamp, well north of Blaviken. I went off to scope out the local town, see if there was any report of him in there, while Andras decided to see if he could find any traces in the swamp. We weren’t expecting him to be there, or we’d’ve taken more precautions, but as it was. . .” He swallows and keeps going. “I heard from the alderman that there were reports of a white-haired witcher making camp in the swamp the last night or so, and I headed out to meet up with Andras, see if we couldn’t track him through it.

“As I was walking through the place, I heard fighting up ahead, swords and the like, and when I got there, there was Andras, with the tip of Geralt’s sword through his throat.”

The room explodes. 

Someone -- Vesemir can’t tell who -- is shouting for an immediate strike force to go and hunt him down, while others are demanding an explanation, from the Cat, from the Council, from Vesemir himself. Daniel, in particular, is demanding that the Wolves make restitution to him for the death of one of his own by a Wolf, and _loudly_. 

It takes the Griffin Head, Eir, setting off a small explosive Igni over everyone else’s heads to get them to shut up and pay attention.

“You’re sure about this,” Laron demands of the Cat, reaching forwards

“Aye. The beast’s killed one of our own; he’s gone feral. He needs to be put down.”

* * *

Geralt has spent the last week or so running north, trying to escape the story of what happened at Blaviken. He’s been avoiding towns, surviving off of what he can hunt and scavenge from the wilderness, struggling to figure out what to do.

Should he go back to Kaer Morhen, present himself to the Wolf Council, admit to his crimes and take the punishment they dole out?

Should he stay in the wilderness, hope this all blows over and that he could go back to what he was before?

Going back to Kaer Morhen means that he’ll get reprimanded, badly, maybe even dragged back down to the Trial room to try to figure out what in his mutations made him do it. And that was if he’s lucky and the story hasn’t gotten all the way back there yet. If the tale of what happened in Blaviken _does_ reach Kaer Morhen before he does, then that meant imprisonment at best. 

But if he waits until this all blows over, then he won’t have the help of the Council in repairing his reputation, or in figuring out where to go from here. And it’s unlikely that Blaviken or the nearby towns will just _forget_.

It’s been keeping him up at night for the past week now, stealing sleep away from him and leaving him retracing the same thoughts over and over and _over_ in his head. 

And those are the best-case scenarios. If the High Council got wind of this, he’d be dragged in front of them no question, and _that_ wouldn’t end with something so gentle as imprisonment. After all, he was the experiment. The _freak_. And while the Trial of the Grasses isn’t something to tamper with, no mage or Trial technician would say no to getting ahold of him and his extra mutations. Not when he looks like he does, when he’s got strength and speed and skills beyond any other witcher out there. 

So he travels south, away from Kaer Morhen and his shame, but he stays on the coast, well away from the spine of mountains down the far edge of the Continent where the witcher schools stand. 

He’s standing in the middle of a swamp, trying to figure out a way over or around one particular patch of deep, sucking mud, when he hears soft footsteps behind him

They’re quiet enough that even a normal witcher wouldn’t have noticed, but he’s not a normal witcher, is he? He turns, one hand drifting back towards the hilt of his sword, and barely has enough warning to dodge a light crossbow bolt that streaks towards his chest from the cover of the underbrush. The point, where it lands on the mud and floats for a moment, is covered in some white substance. Poison, or something similar.

He draws his sword slowly, breathing deep to feel for a scent, but there’s only the stench of the mud around him, and whoever it is is _very_ good at camouflage.

He steps forward a little, finds stable(-ish) footing on the slippery mud and grass, and waits for his opponent to come to him.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

With the _hiss_ of sword against leather scabbard-mouth, a mud-covered figure lunges out of the bushes, trying to force him back into the deep pool behind him. Geralt doesn’t let him, trying to turn the fight so that _he’s_ the one with his back to the trees and dryer ground to retreat to if need be. 

The other figure, however, is just as good as he is, and possibly _faster_. His strikes are stronger than a normal man’s, and when Geralt gets a glimpse of his face, yellow eyes flash out of the coating of mud.

 _Fuck_. 

It’s another witcher, and obviously not one he would call “brother” or even “cousin”. 

“Why are you doing this?” he grits out, in a moment of stillness when their swords are locked hilt to hilt.

The other witcher smiles and disengages neatly, fumbling on the slippery ground for a moment. He’s obviously not used to fighting on the uncertain terrain of swamps; Geralt doesn’t blame him. Swamps are dirty, nasty, messy, and full of things like kikimoras that don’t even get you paid very much. Geralt doesn’t press his advantage, though, trying to drag this out so he can _actually figure out what the fuck is going on_.

“The High Council heard about what happened in Blaviken, _freak_ , and they want you back at Kaer Duchan so they can figure out what to do with you,” the witcher smiles, lifting his sword in an overhead guard. Geralt remains where he is, half-crouched and ready to abandon this place if need be. Roach has backed away, thankfully, and is watching the fight from between two trees. 

Geralt hums noncommittally, stalling for time, and blocks another lightning-fast swing. Whatever School this witcher is from, he’s faster than Geralt is, if not stronger, and he’s good at tracking if he managed to follow him all the way in here.

“Word is you’ve gone feral,” the other witcher says, and _that_ throws Geralt off just the tiniest bit just enough that when the other witcher slips on a clump of grass and lurches forward, bringing his sword underneath Geralt’s guard so his parry misses and his sword slides closer to the other witcher than he ever meant it to, he can’t pull the blow meant to block the strike and his sword embeds itself in the other man’s neck, catching in his spine and ripping from Geralt’s numb hands. 

Feral. 

This is. . . this is not good. 

**_Fuck_ ** **.**

Feral means that they’ve given up on him. Feral means that Vesemir wasn’t able to keep the High Council from his throat any longer, that Blaviken got out and made it all the way to Kaer Duchan in a week and a half.

Feral means there’s a price on his head, and that if word of _this_ gets out, of another witcher dead at his feet, there’s not a soul alive that’s going to be able to save him. 

He stands there, panting, looking down at the dying witcher in front of him, and he doesn’t know what to do. There’s no precedent for this, not in anything he was taught or in anything he’s done on the Path. He never expected to kill one of his own kind; the penalty for that is almost always _death_. He’s been lucky in the past, but he’s not going to be lucky now.

Someone hisses from the bushes, and he whips around to see another witcher, this one not covered in mud to disguise their scent (but the fight distracted him enough that he missed it anyways), standing behind him, sword already half out and teeth bared.

Not knowing what else to do, Geralt yanks his sword out of the dead witcher’s neck, whistles to Roach, and _runs._

* * *

There are immediate shouts of agreement from other schools. The Cats are the loudest, of course, followed by their allied Vipers and the Cranes. The Bears, always concerned with keeping order, are deep in discussion with the Griffins, who keep shooting apologetic glances at the Wolves. Both Mikkel and Ravan have bruising-tight grips on Vesemir’s arms, pinning him down into his seat, but he couldn’t stand even if he wanted to. There’s no coming back from this, no possible way to defend Geralt. 

The High Council is attempting to hold a conversation with the Cat over all the commotion, but not having much success until Laron gestures at Eir and the rest of the Griffins again to get everyone’s attention.

With the rolling boom of another explosive Igni faded away, it’s Laron who stands up as the Council chamber hushes, facing the Cat directly. “As Geralt of Rivia is a member of my former School, and the current Wolf Head is known to hold considerable bias in his favor, I will be conducting the rest of this meeting in Master Samuel’s place.” Samuel looks distinctly pissed about it, but there’s nothing he can do. It’s only fair for a Wolf to make the decision to. . . eliminate one of their own. 

Fuck, Vesemir, say it like it is. To hunt down and kill a member of his own School like a rabid dog. 

“How much of the attack did you witness?” Laron asks, leaning closer in the hush.

“I only saw the last bit of the fight, when the freak damn near chopped his head off, but I heard the earlier parts. Didn’t sound like a friendly bout, and when I got there, it looked like the freak’d maneuvered Andras onto the worse ground, just to get the advantage, not to try to escape or hold off on the fight long enough to talk with him.”

No one objects to Geralt being called ‘freak’ this time around. 

“So you can’t be sure that what happened was an accident?”

“If it was an accident, would he have run away after?” _That_ sets the room to hissing.

Mikkel leans in to talk softly in Vesemir’s ear, “That sound like Geralt to you?”

It… doesn’t, but he’s not spent much time around Geralt (any time at all, really) since he left to go out on the Path, and he’s starting to realize he may not know him as well as he thought. Geralt never seemed the kind to run from something he’d done, not when he was in his right mind, but he might have changed.

Or he might really have gone feral. He can’t ignore that possibility, as much as he may wish to. 

Mikkel appears to have taken his silence for an answer, and him and Ravan are both staring at their hands, trying to figure out how they can salvage this situation. They can’t. There’s no way out that doesn’t end with Geralt’s death.

The Cat continues. “I showed up, ready to ask him what happened, and he _ran_ . Didn’t even bother to try to talk, just _ran,_ like some kind of scared animal. I don’t know why he didn’t try to kill me. Maybe because I startled him bad enough that he decided it wasn’t worth it.”

“So he _has_ lost all reason, then,” Laron states, face settling into a blank mask.

“I’d stake my earnings for the next five years on it.”

“He needs to be killed!” Daniel bursts out, lunging to his feet. Samuel is already nodding, along with the Viper Head. “We _cannot_ have a killer running around on the Continent. He’ll ruin the reputations of every witcher around, not just his own--” that has the more usually neutral Bears and Griffins nodding along, as well as Lukas and Ravan, “and he has killed a member of my School. Whatever the Council may decide, I _cannot_ let that stand. Make the decision to hunt him down and _get rid of him_ , or I will do it for you.”

‘Oh, no, I already agree with you, of course,” Samuel says, bowing slightly in his direction. Iveth is nodding as well, while the members of the High Council that haven’t gotten involved so far, the Crane representative Ivan and Sean formerly-of-the-Bears, are starting to take an interest, leaning forward as Samuel talks. “We’ve never let actions such as this stand in the past, and we won’t let them stand now. Laron, as Wolf representative on the Council, have you any opinion?”

Laron, sighs, and doesn’t look at Vesemir. “I agree with Master Daniel. The High Council will put out a contract for Geralt of Rivia’s head. Should the witchers who choose to take the contract fail, it will be given to a witcher of the Council’s choice.” Which means they’re going to send their attack dog after him. “As it stands, Geralt of Rivia cannot be allowed to live. Is there any objection?”

Mikkel’s grip gets tight enough on Vesemir’s arm that it actually _hurts_ , a warning not to do anything stupid that might get him deposed or worse. 

The Crane Head speaks up, for the first time. “If Geralt of Rivia truly has gone bad, then he needs to be safely taken care of, and there are people in this Council who are known to be willing to defend him against all logic or sanity. I fear that they might attempt to save him, offer shelter at their School or elsewhere.”

All eyes snap to Vesemir. He glares out at them even as Mikkel squeezes his arm, a warning not to get involved. 

Iveth jumps in. “Agreed. Shall we make it that any member of this Council found aiding the fugitive will be stripped of rank and position, and any witcher found to be aiding him will be treated as if they had gone bad as well?”

“Seconded,” jumps in Daniel, followed rapidly by Samuel. Laron looks like he’s going to object, but ultimately keeps his mouth shut. 

Vesemir knows that he should fight back, should bring up Geralt’s track record of successful kills, of his training records, of his actions in recent years that speak more of a witcher _too_ controlled than anything else. He should bring up his _own_ track record, his place as training master, should fight to find a way out of this, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t do anything.

He’s too _numb_ to do anything. 

Samuel rises to his feet. “Then it is determined that Geralt of Rivia has gone feral and must be put down. Contract will be open to whoever wishes to take it up. If that’s all?” No one says anything, “I declare this meeting adjourned. Mages will send you all back to your keeps. Thank you for your time.” He bows, short, and turns to leave the room, followed by the rest of the High Council.

No one wants to look at the Wolves, all of the other Schools exiting the room silently, leaving the four of them standing at their table, not talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I have reevaluated my current posting schedule and realized that I don't like it! So I'm going to rework it and speed it up a little. :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyy, we actually get more Julian for once!

Standing in the entranceway, waiting for the mages to open up the portal back home, Vesemir gets sympathetic glances from the Bears and Griffins, and glares from the Cats present. The Vipers are as arrogant as always, noses in the air as if they haven’t ever had a member go bad, and the Cranes are simply whispering to themselves, standing with their backs to the other Schools.

It’s a relief to escape Kaer Duchan, back to the courtyard where the boys who might be graduating this year are busy sparring against--

Fuck, it’s _Eskel_ in the courtyard, letting a bunch of trainees hammer on his quen while he relaxes in the center, sword held loosely at his side.

Vesemir has a momentary flash of anger, where if he’d just _been here earlier_ all of this could’ve been avoided, Geralt could be safe in Kaer Morhen by now, but no, that’s not fair to him, or to anyone.

Eskel waves with one hand and lazily disarms one of the older boys with Aard, targeted precisely to his wrist and just strong enough to send his sword flying without breaking his arm. Vesemir huffs and waves for Eskel to follow, leading the way up to his tiny office and out of the reach of even witcher ears.

He can smell the confusion rolling off of the younger witcher, even as it changes to worry, and then Eskel is running to catch up and striding along determinedly at his side.

“What happened?”

“Not here.”

“ _Shit_.”

“Exactly.” 

Eskel follows him quickly and silently up the narrow winding staircase that the servants use, when they go up to the instructor’s offices at all. It’s little used, dusty as all hell, and nearly soundproof, with thick stone walls that muffle the ringing of boots on stone steps from anyone in the corridors outside. 

At the very top of this particular tower is the Wolf Head’s office. Vesemir prefers to use his old one, in the gatehouse just over the courtyard meant for the training masters, just out of long familiarity. But that one isn’t magically sealed and soundproofed the way this one is, and for what he’s got in mind, he needs that. If this gets out to Mikkel or Ravan, or, gods forbid, _Lukas_ , he’s likely to be deposed at _best._

After they’re both in the tiny room, made tinier by the massive oak desk of the _previous_ Wolf Head, and Vesemir has locked the door with its three deadbolts and fired up the silencing spells, only then does he turn to look at Eskel, who has settled against the doorsill, only his fingers, twitching in and out of the signs, betraying his worry.

“Is this about why you called me back to Kaer Morhen?”

“It is.”

“Is this about whatever happened at that Council session?”

Vesemir’s unbalanced for a little before he realizes that he’s spent so much time around teenage boys that he’s forgotten that Eskel is an actual, full witcher now and thus trained to notice things like him coming out of a portal pissed off, which only happens after a Council session. “Yes. How much do you know about Blaviken?”

“What happened in Blaviken?”

So he doesn’t know _anything_ , then. He’d be violently defending Geralt if he did. “There’s. . . been an Incident.” He knows Eskel can hear the capital letter, the same way he can hear the capital letter when they’re talking about the _actual_ Incident. “Geralt, supposedly, mind you, lost control and killed an unidentified number of innocents in Blaviken about two weeks ago, reported to be around thirty men, along with one girl he slept with, and then posed a death threat to Stregobor. He’s been declared feral, and a contract’s been opened for his head. If no one succeeds, the High Council gives it to their attack dog.” Easier to start with just the facts. 

Eskel’s gone still and quiet, hand tightening in the shape of a sword hilt, although it stays by his side, not reaching up and over his shoulder. “That’s impossible.”

“What part? Because I was just at the Council meeting that decided all of it. I’ll grant you Geralt wouldn’t act like that, but the Council’s always willing to believe the worst of him, and it’s their word that matters here.”

“And you called me back here to-- what, go out and hunt my brother down? For going feral? Geralt wouldn’t let that happen. He’d slit his own throat before he lost control.” He’s standing in the middle of the room, facing Vesemir, eyes flashing gold in the dim light, though the rest of him is as calm and relaxed as ever. 

“I know. Originally, I wanted you to fetch him back here so we could figure out what to do, but that won’t work now.”

“Can’t be found harboring fugitives. I know.” Eskel settles against the door again, fingers clenching and unclenching. “So what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to find out what _really_ happened and get a message to him. Figure out what’s going on, and find a way to tell him about the Council’s ruling. Report back to me about his current state, and try to find a way to prove to the Council that he’s not feral.”

“And if. . .”

Vesemir sighs. “Find a way to fix it. Whatever it takes.”

“I have to keep this a secret, don’t I.”

 _Smart boy_. “They’ve threatened to strip my position and send me back out on the Path if I’m found to be helping him in any way. If you get found out, you’ll be treated as if you’d gone bad. ”

“ _Shit._ ” Eskel pauses, paces, then settles facing the desk. “ You said he’d been seen in Blaviken?”

“In that area, yes. I don’t know his exact whereabouts.”

“Shit. Alright, I’ll head out as soon as possible, then. The Council know I’m here?”

“They know I summoned you to bring Geralt back, but they expect me to send you away again immediately. Don’t let them see you heading for Blaviken, don’t let them know you’re heading for Geralt--”

“I know how to be a witcher, Vesemir,” Eskel cuts in dryly, grinning, although it looks strained on his scarred face. 

“I should hope so, given that I’m the one who taught you. Just. . . be careful. I can’t lose _two_ of you.”

“You won’t,” Eskel says, confident. “Geralt’s depending on me to save his life, after all.” That gets another grin on the younger witcher’s face, much more genuine this time, and Geralt is definitely going to be catching some shit from that. Eskel dips his head to Vesemir and slips out the door, quick and silent as only a witcher can. 

Vesemir stays in his office and just. . . exists, for a little bit, before heading back down the main staircase to reclaim his job from Oskar and Tobin. 

* * *

The bard in this tavern is _awful_ , pitchy half the time, and where she’s not, she’s struggling for notes out of her range, straining to sing what she must consider a “proper feminine ballad”, where something low and sweet and dark might suit her voice more.

Pity. She’s got potential. If she’s been trained properly, she could be a great--

Doesn’t matter. He’s not one to talk. 

Julian looks down at his platter and grimaces. Roasted lean rabbit, again, just like _everywhere else_ in this godsdamned corner of the Continent. A witcher might be able to eat almost anything, but if he has to eat rabbit one more time he might just get protein poisoning and die. He’s not joking! It’s a real thing!

Well, he _would_ be joking. If he had anyone to joke _with_. 

As it stands, though, there’s the _bard_ , who surely wouldn’t appreciate even the gentlest of criticisms, the bar _maid_ , who is clearly terrfied of him for his “unnatural appetites” (yes, all witchers have a very healthy sex drive, that doesn’t mean he’s going to _rape_ her, thank you), the group of young men getting steadily drunker over in the corner and shooting him more trying-to-be-stealthy-and-failing-miserably glances the more they drink, the down-on-his-luck farmer drowning his sorrows at the bar, and the merchant and his sons spending the night in this town. They’re... _less_ terrified of him than the rest, clearly more accustomed to the sight of witchers on the roads, but they’re still wary.

With a sigh, he strips the last bit of meat off the bones, drops his plate off at the bar for the maid there to handle, and wanders upstairs to his bed and his bath.

The bath is cold and the bed is lumpy (he thinks the merchants got the best rooms), but it’s a better place to sleep than the forest floor and rabbit made in an actual kitchen is better than rabbit eaten raw or charred over a fire. It’s as good as he ever gets, these days. Not that there were days _before_ “these days”. Not since he was eight, and he got sold--

Ah-ah-ah, nope, he doesn’t think about that. Doesn’t think about what could have been if his mother hadn’t fucked the stablehand instead of her--

 _No_. No use thinking about that. Destiny has laid his path out for him, and it’s failure to do anything other than walk it.

The morning is the same as always. Wake up, pack up, buy a bit of hard cheese and bread from the still-terrified barmaid for breakfast on the road, and it’s off to the next town, the next contract, the next monster.

There are whispers, though, in this new and bigger town, whispers that accompany sharp glances and quick movements _away_ from him. He catches more than one person stooping for a stone, only to be stopped by a companion, and he only stops in at the village inn to ask directions to the next town over rather than spend the night there.

While he’s talking with the innkeeper, whispers rise behind him, and he might only be a Viper, without the hearing of a Wolf or Cat or Griffin, but it’s clear enough that he catches mentions of a place called “Blaviken”, and a Butcher thereof. As he’s leaving, he catches mention of white hair, and then he’s out the door and back on Pegasus, riding hard for the relative safety of the forest. 

White hair, huh? White hair, in his experience, means Geralt of Rivia, who’s famous among the Schools for _something_ , though he doesn’t know _what_. All his teachers would say about him was that they thought Julian might even be able to beat the famous freak of Kaer Morhen, though they refused to explain why he was a freak when Julian had asked, curious. 

He’d had _that_ beaten out of him right quick, though the curiosity _itself_ never really went away. Only the _questions_. 

Either way, it’s not his place to ask them. Not his place to get involved unless the High Council wants him to, and then... Well. They only ever want him to do one thing, and it’s not like he can say _no_. 

* * *

Geralt runs, out of the swamp and onto the main road, Roach following him faithfully. He runs until he hears her footsteps start to falter, and then he slows and walks until the moon sets, leaving the two of them in near-total darkness. He can still see fine, and Roach trusts him enough to follow where he leads, but it’s still not a good idea to travel on a night with no moon, not even as a witcher.

So he pulls her off the road at the first possible campsite he finds, settling easily into the familiar routine. Tack and gear off, bedroll out, a ring of wards cast just in case ( _just in case there’s something more than monsters on his trail_ ), Roach left to graze or sleep, whichever she prefers, and then he sits down at the end of his bedroll and stares into the space where a fire would be.

He is _so fucked_. 

Not only did the Council send a pair of Cats to apprehend him like some common criminal, he _killed one_. And left his partner alive to report back.

If there was any chance of the Blaviken... thing blowing over, he tossed it on the trash heap and set it on fire. There’s no way there’s not a price on his head now, not with the death of a brother on his head. 

He’s been under the eye of the High Council before, but that was when he was young enough that he could pass... _it_ off as Trial residue. And when he had not only Vesemir’s support, but the Wolf Head’s support, and Vesemir’s friends in the Witcher Council that were willing to listen to him and give a second chance to a promising (and visibly terrified) teenager. 

Now he’s no longer some fresh-faced child, and it’s not like he has many friends outside the Wolf School. And Vesemir, for all that the Wolf School respects him, lost a lot of standing in the Council over... _it_ . And Blaviken was full of innocents, or people who will be spun as innocents by the townsfolk, and he’s _already killed another witcher._

He is _so. Fucking. Fucked._

There’ll be other witchers, sent out to kill him, and if he runs into one of them in a town, they’ll take the chance to engage or call in backup or track him. If he has _any_ contact with his brothers, the Council will probably use them to get to him. Which means he can’t ask for help from Kaer Morhen, can’t see Eskel or Vesemir, until all this is solved somehow.

And there’s the problem: he _doesn’t know how to solve it_. There’s nothing he can do or say that will get him back in the Council’s good graces. Not after this. Fuck. 

With a groan, he flops back on his bedroll, and stares up at the heavy cloud cover through the trees. He’s going to have to go into hiding, at some point, just to make it out of this alive. Maybe, at some point, the Council will give up. If he survives long enough, without another... incident like Blaviken, maybe they’ll let him go, give up on the active hunt.

He still won’t be able to go home ever again, and that hurts in his very bones. 

He rolls onto his side, not bothering with the blankets -- it’s a warm night, and he’s more cold resistant than most -- trying to calm his mind enough to, if not sleep, then at least meditate.

It doesn’t work. 

_What if he actually is going feral? Losing it? What if putting a blade to his own throat would be the safest thing for everyone?_

No. He can’t be. He would know if he was losing control.

_Would he, though? Or would he think that all his actions were rational ones, that he was as sane as any witcher?_

The choices he made in Blaviken were the only ones he had at the time. No other way, not unless he was willing to let Renfri kill the entire village to get to Stregobor. 

_And the Cat?_

That was an accident.

_Is that the truth? Or is that just the truth he’s telling himse--_

It was an _accident_ . On his honor, it was an _accident_.

* * *

Eskel had _not_ expected Geralt to be so hard to find.

Sure, he’d been stealthy when they were training, but that was “how many minutes can you skulk in the bushes without Vesemir noticing you and whacking you over the head with a stick”, not “how many months can you spend avoiding the attention of the entire Witcher Council as well as passing without notice through as many towns as possible?” 

Currently, the count is _three_ , and Eskel never would have suspected that Geralt of Rivia, with his refusal to wear anything other than witcher blacks and surly personality and... _unique_ appearance would be capable of staying so completely out of the public eye, to the point that even if he _specifies_ “goes by the name Geralt of Rivia, Wolf School,” (which is almost never needed if he asks for a pissed-off witcher, so high, white hair, tall dark and broody) he just gets a shrug and a polite request (or not-so-polite, depending on the town’s size, relative isolation, and proximity to Blaviken) to fuck off. 

Currently he’s going off rumors of the Butcher being spotted heading south along the coast, although some of them say south inland, or south towards the witcher castle, or just south. (Actually, only about half of them say he’s headed south, but it’s a unified half, as opposed to the wild spitballing he gets from the rest. Because of course a witcher in hiding would be heading to Aretuza, the all-female mage school that would undoubtedly see what kinds of benefits they could get out of selling said witcher back to the Council. That or cutting him apart to find out the secrets of the Trials. Makes perfect sense.)

So he’s making a sweep search back and forth along three different main roads, gathering what information he can about any witchers that’ve passed through and going in the opposite direction unless it sounds like Geralt. He’s hidden his Wolf medallion under his shirt, as much as it pains him, and done his best to disguise the scars on his face. While it _would_ be nice if Geralt heard he was searching for him, he doesn’t want to risk the High Council finding out and tracking him down. Unlike Geralt, apparently, he has enough problems without them meddling in his life. He’d rather not draw their attention. 

So here he is, wandering through a dark forest on a night with only the bare sliver of a moon, looking for traces of his brother in what has to be the _worst_ place to camp on the Continent without even Scorpion for company because the trees are too close together to let the stallion pass safely through at anything resembling a decent speed. 

There’s the faint smell of woodsmoke staining the air, old, probably a week or more, but it’s _there_. He tracks it between the trees, head lifted, surveying the branches and-- ha.

Deadwood broken off for a fire, but not haphazardly like any traveller. No, it’s been carefully removed to make it look natural, but despite the fresh, unweathered look of the inside of the stumps, there are only rotten twigs on the ground, no dry wood. 

_Someone_ was here a week ago, someone who knew how to hide their presence in the wood. Which means a forester or witcher, and he doubts any _forester_ would want to camp here. 

He follows the smell of smoke further onwards, and comes across a tiny clearing where a small fire had been built up in a natural cradle of ground between two iron-hard tree roots. The ashes have been covered over with dead leaves, but when he digs for them, they’re there, a tiny pocket of charcoal. The grass has been noticeably cropped, and when he breathes deep, focusing on blocking everything else out, there’s the faint chemical scent that all witchers give off, overlaid by _horse_.

Gods, Roach may be an excellent mount, but _damn_ does this version of her smell. 

He grins, the movement pulling at the light layer of facepaint smoothed over his scars to hide them, and breathes deep. It’s faint, but it’s there; the combination of scents that mean _Geralt_ , chemicals and herbs and monster ichor, overlaying the part that’s just _him_. And Roach, of course, is easy to track, but it’s not like anyone would connect her to Geralt without having met her at least once before. (Strength aside, she doesn’t smell like much more than “horse”, maybe “witcher’s horse”, to anyone who hasn’t spent a fair amount of time around her, and only Vipers are really trained to remember scents after a single exposure.)

He retraces his steps to bring Scorpion through to the campsite, following the path that Geralt probably used to get Roach in. It’s not easy to get through, but manageable, and no one would think that someone with a horse would get through here. 

Even as the trees grow far enough apart to let him ride, he doesn’t mount up. It’s easier to follow the trace on foot; his nose is closer to the source. It’s going to mean a lot of walking in the next few days (weeks, probably, with how fast Geralt moves), but it’s worth it.

After three months of searching, he’s finally found his brother.

* * *

There’s someone on Geralt’s trail.

He should’ve expected it; three months is a long time to go unnoticed with the High Council after him. Because, even though he’s been careful to avoid bigger towns, avoid taking contracts more high-profile than drowners, avoid other witchers, he’s certain the High Council’s after him. 

There’s no way they’re _not_. 

Still, he’s been careful, but now someone’s found him, and it _might_ be someone like Coen, or Finnbar, friends of his from other schools who could be persuaded to look the other way and let him go, but there’s a far higher chance that it’s a Cat, tracking him down for the death of their kinsman. When he walks into dingy inns in small towns on his circuitous path south, half the time someone mentions that there was another witcher looking for someone like him: tall, dark, white-haired. 

The only description they can give is “yellow eyes, ‘bout your height, maybe shorter, dark hair, scarred.” Yellow eyes means it’s probably not a Viper, but the rest of it could describe a good third, maybe more, of all the witchers in the world. Which isn’t particularly helpful. So he thanks whoever gave him the description, buys his supplies, and leaves town to find a place to camp for the night. He’s not staying in inns, anymore. Too risky. Too easy to be found, to be trapped or pinned down. Innkeepers can be bribed, mugs can be poisoned, doors and windows can be locked shut or picked open… they’re all skills he’s used at one time or another for a contract -- he never thought he’d be the one on the other side. 

So he picks up his pace, leading Roach at a jog more often than not, sometimes moving at night or doubling back on himself. He sets what false trails he can, while still running south. He spends three weeks trying to shake his pursuer, but although they don’t seem to get any closer, they don’t lose him, either, and he’s _exhausted_. It’s like they know every move he’ll make before he makes it, and have already adjusted their course to match his. 

So eventually he gives up on trying to lose them and starts thinking about setting traps.

* * *

Keeping up with Geralt is _exhausting_.

He’s pulling out every trick he knows to try to shake Eskel, and the only reason that Eskel hasn’t been shook is because he learned the same skills right next to Geralt. He knows what he’s going to try to pull, and when, although fifty years on the path have taught even an old wolf new tricks. 

Still, the fact that Geralt is aware enough to try to shake him is reassuring. It means he hasn’t lost _everything_ he’d learned (not that Eskel’s been _worried_ , but... well. He’s been worried since the Incident, never mind that it was fifty years ago.)

Still. He hasn’t slept in three days, and he hasn’t had the time to stop and rest even a little since this morning. Because Geralt can _move_ , when he wants to. He’s got the best stamina out of any of the Wolves Eskel knows, not that he’d ever tell his brother that. It’s his job to keep Geralt from getting a swelled head, after all. 

So he’s off his game by a _lot_ when the blade comes out of nowhere, nudging against his throat, razor edge just brushing the skin, enough to feel but not enough to cut. He pulls up sharply, flips a hand back to signal Scorpion to calm, and waits for Geralt’s blade to drop away from his throat.

Geralt, damn him, looks surprisingly put together for someone who’s been on the run for the better part of three months. His hair is maybe more silver than usual, but still held neatly back in its tail, while his armor is dusty but not more so than Eskel’s, or any other witcher’s. His face is relatively clean (for Geralt, anyways), and he holds his sword steadily, without fatigue tremors or drooping posture. 

It’s only his eyes that show the strain. 

They’re ringed by dark bruises, set skull-like deep in his head, and they flick around Eskel’s face, scanning the area for threats. Behind the yellow irises and slitted pupils (too narrow for the light level, just like always), they’re bloodshot, and he can’t seem to focus his gaze on one thing for longer than a few moments. 

Fuck “put together”, he looks like _shit_. 

With a quick, jerky movement, Geralt has his sword away and is yanking Eskel off the trail and behind a tree, clicking his tongue for Roach to follow him.

“The fuck are you doing here, Eskel?” he hisses, head still held at alert for anyone approaching. 

“I’m not allowed to want to see my brother?” Eskel teases, schooling his face to hide the warmth building up in his chest. Geralt is still _Geralt_ , and he hadn’t realized how much he’d been worried that he _wouldn’t_ be until this moment, when all that weight got taken off his chest.

“I’m a _fugitive_ , not someone you drop by to see over drinks.”

“Funny, this doesn’t look like a tavern. ”

Geralt snorts and eases back a little. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says, reaching out to smear off a bit of the paint covering Eskel’s scars with one thumb, looking at it and then at Eskel with a raised eyebrow. Eskel swats his hand away with a scowl, and Geralt wipes it off on the tree.

“Vesemir sent me.” That gets him another raised eyebrow and a little more breathing room. “He wanted me to find out what happened at Blaviken.”

“Hm.” It’s the sharp grunt that mean’s Geralt’s irritated, closed off, but Eskel’s had literal decades of practice prying open his shell.

“What, you gonna tell me the whole thing was blown out of proportion and all you did was put a sick old tomcat out of its misery?”

“Hm. No. What’s the Council saying?”

He’s deflecting. Better than not saying anything, at least. “Thirty people in the town square for no reason, most of them innocent townsfolk, plus one girl that you may or may not have slept with--”

“Renfri,” he growls, eyes going slightly unfocused. “I chose the wrong side.”

“You also threatened a mage of the Brotherhood and pissed him off bad enough that he agreed to testify in front of the Council?”

“Stregobor,” and oh, if he hadn’t been growling before, he sure as hell is _now_ . Eskel can feel the vibrations in his teeth. (He may have been _slightly_ jealous of Geralt just after their voices broke. It’s not like his own voice is squeaky or shrill, exactly, but Geralt’s voice is just… too much.) “I should’ve killed him when I had the chance.”

That’s not good. “Start from the beginning. And I know you’re shit at storytelling, but try to make an effort.”

Geralt’s not even looking at him anymore, instead fixed on some random patch of ground. “Renfri was born under the Black Sun. Stregobor said there was a prophecy that would make her evil, so he took her in, did experiments on her to figure out what her powers were. How to ‘fix’ her. She’d escaped him and was running a band of brigands when we met, and she asked me to kill Stregobor for her.”

“I take it you refused?”

“We don’t get involved.”

Eskel sighs. “And then you got involved.”

“Fuck off.” He goes silent, and Eskel waits. “She was threatening to kill the entire town if I didn’t go after Stregobor. I had to stop her. I didn’t have another choice.” He’s practically pleading with Eskel now, and _fuck_ , this isn’t a side of Geralt that he ever wanted to see again. “I had to kill her, but I made the wrong choice. I should’ve killed Stregobor.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I had the chance. I didn’t take it.”

Eskel hums consideringly. “At least you don’t have the Brotherhood on your ass for killing one of their highest-ranking members.” Geralt’s eyes go wide, pupils shrinking, like that was something he hadn’t even considered. Probably didn’t even cross his mind. “How many was it?”

“Nine. None of them innocent townsfolk. And. . . and Renfri.” He clenches his jaw, hard, and looks away. Standard ‘I’m Geralt of Rivia and I like to pretend I have the emotions of a lump of granite’ move. 

“And you’ve been beating yourself up about it for four months.” Geralt doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even move. Eskel pauses, reconsiders. When did it become his job to interpret Geralt’s emotions for him? “Well, at the very least, I can go back and tell Vesemir you’re not feral.”

“You don’t know that.” It’s immediate, although Geralt still isn’t looking at him.

“I think I do, given that you’re more broken up over this than I’ve seen you in _decades_ , and that I’ve spent three weeks trying to track you while you pull out every trick in the book to shake me off. I’ve seen you feral. This isn’t it.” Geralt opens his mouth to say something but Eskel rolls right over him. “You messed up pretty badly. I get it. But that’s just a mistake, not going feral. If you’re this insistent on beating yourself up--”

“I _killed another witcher_ ,” Geralt breaks in, low and urgent, eyes flashing. “I don’t know if Vesemir told you about that, but I killed one of our brothers--”

“You killed a Wolf?” He can’t keep the shock out of his voice. He’s not _heard_ of any deaths in the School, but if they’re young it often doesn’t get reported until they don’t show up for their thirtieth winter--

“A Cat. And it was an accident.”

“A Cat? What happened? How much of an accident?”

“We were fighting on rough terrain, he slipped and I couldn’t pull my blow.”

“So _he_ attacked _you_ , then. And you tried to keep from killing him, he slipped, you stabbed him. Then what?”

“His partner showed up.”

“And you ran. That explains why they want you dead at least. Look, Geralt--”

“I can’t go back to Kaer Morhen, can I.” It’s not a question.

“No.”

“Hmm.”

“I don’t think any of the Wolves are going to attack you, but there are assassins after you.”

“They sent anyone in particular?” They both know what he’s talking about, and all Eskel can do is hope that _that_ never happens. There’s a very real possibility that not even _Geralt_ would survive if the Council’s attack dog went after him. 

“Haven’t heard anything from Vesemir, but they wouldn’t tell him anyways. Geralt, the High Council wants your head. Sending their dog after you is the least they’d be willing to do. You have to go into hiding and _stay_ in hiding until--”

“There’s no until, Eskel. They’ll be hunting me for the rest of my life. The best I can do is hope they forget about me.”

“And that’s not going to happen.” That gets him another grunt and a sign. “Look, just. . . let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. Food, money-- I’ve got a little saved, enough for a night at an inn and a decent meal.”

“Keep it.” Geralt sighs, folding back in on himself, turning from the big scary witcher to the scared teenage boy Eskel remembers from training, terrified of what the mutations were doing to him, already tired of the witcher life before he even started on the Path. “But thank you. I’ll ask, if I--” He cuts himself off as Eskel yanks him into a hug, and there’s a moment of frozen shock before he hugs back, _tight_ , and Eskel gives himself a moment to pretend they’re still young and naive about the work, not jaded old witchers with too much pain and too many scars.

Geralt lets him go, and nods, tightly. “You should go. We can’t be seen together.”

Eskel nods back, but doesn’t move to mount Scorpion and leave, instead watching as Geralt swings easily up into the saddle and rides off into the woods without looking back. He never lets himself look back.

Eskel scrubs a hand over his face, then looks down in disgust at the paint smeared over his gloves as he shakes his hand out and wipes it on a tree.


	5. Chapter 5

The first year Geralt was out on the Path, he’d realized that being a witcher was _hard_. Harder than any of the training made it seem, because the training was all about killing monsters. And the monsters were the easy part. Monsters were _simple_.

No, the hard part was dealing with how humans _saw w_ itchers. At best, they’re nothing more than lowlife mercenaries, not worth more than a passing glance and to be dealt with for necessity’s sake alone. At worst, they’re animals. Machines. Created for one purpose and one purpose alone: to kill the things that need killing. Any desire for food, safety, warmth, shelter, _comfort_? Witchers don’t have that. Witchers don’t _feel_. 

He’d gone from a wide-eyed idealistic pup to a beaten-down mess in about six months, until he’d started to harden his heart to it all. Until he’d learned to tune out the discussion about whether witchers felt pain, or fear, or anger, or shame, or what would happen if they tried to provoke him. Until he’d learned to look past the way men flinched when they met his golden-eyed gaze. Until he’d learned to ignore the looks on barmaids’ faces when he asked them for a meal or directions, like he was going to kill them right there if they didn’t manage to placate him. Kill them, or _worse._

It’d gotten easier, especially since he’d survived his first decade and started going home for the winter and Eskel and Aubry and Vesemir and all the rest were there to swap stories about asshole towns and unusual hunts, to meet his eyes without fear and give him a friendly slap on the shoulder and an “it gets easier, pup.”

And it had. He’d made it past his first decade without much more than a few scars along his legs and gut, built up a reputation just like all good witchers did, and settled into the comfortable routine of the Path. Ride into town, take and complete the contract, get paid, winter in Kaer Morhen and maybe meet his brothers on the road every so often to share a pint and a story or two. It’d been _good_.

And then he’d fucked it all up.

* * *

The first hunter shows up six months into his exile, when he gets told that “there’s someone lookin’ for ya, Witcher,” with a nasty grin from a taverngoer as he’s negotiating with the owner for travel supplies. He ignores the man. That’s not how people act when they’re looking to give him a contract, and making small talk with villagefolk never goes well.

Look what happened last time. 

“ _Lookin’_ for ya, Witcher,” the man repeats, like he thinks Geralt might be deaf. “One’a yer own kind. You hellspawn got a grudge or somethin’? ‘Cause the way he was askin’, it sounded like he’d pay to see yer head on a pike.”

Not anyone friendly, then. He drops the agreed-upon amount of coin (some of his last, he needs to take a contract soon or be stuck in the wilderness with no money) onto the bar and starts wrapping up the bits of cheese and hard bread.

“Think he’d pay _me_ if I brought it to him?” the man asks, leaning in closer. He’s not drunk, just an idiot, but either way getting involved won’t end well, so Geralt only grunts and turns to leave. He’s got everything packed away, about to mount up and ride off, when there’s a flash of movement and a flare of silver out of the corner of his eye.

He spins, catches, twists, and the knife goes skidding into the dirt, the man from earlier kneeling hard in the dirt, one hand spun up behind his back. He’s not injured -- Geralt doesn’t even have him in a bone-breaker hold, but the moderately busy street still goes dead-still and quiet.

Geralt lets him go with a huff, kicks the knife a little further away, and has one foot in the stirrup when someone shouts from behind him, and he twists to catch-- yellow eyes, and a short, curved steel sword (modeled after a falchion, light and made for slashing, a _Cat_ sword--) held loosely in one hand.

Fuck.

He hoists himself up into Roach’s saddle and kicks her into a gallop, riding hard through the packed-earth streets, using the buildings as cover to try to slip away from the other witcher. And then he’s out on the open road, riding as fast as Roach can take him, hoping that whoever’s after him, he’s got enough of a lead to escape them.

It doesn’t work.

Because of _course_ it doesn’t fucking work. 

They show up at the clearing where he’s camping in the middle of the night a few days later and try to stab him with a poisoned blade while he’s sleeping. He only manages to roll away from it in the nick of time, and gets a long scratch over his collarbone and shoulder for his troubles. 

It’s a Cat, because of course it’s a Cat, and he’s fast and strong and not above fighting dirty, if the fact that he tried to stab Geralt with a poisoned knife in the middle of the night is anything to go by. It takes everything he’s got in him just to kick free of his bedroll and scramble to his feet, His swords have been moved out of easy reach, probably by the Cat, so he gropes for the first thing nearby and comes up with a handful of fine ash that he scatters in the other witcher’s face, trying to buy some time to get to his swords.

The Cat staggers back, but manages to maneuver himself between Geralt and his swords, forcing him into the small space between his bedroll and the embers of the fire. It should be enough to trap him, without heavy boots to protect him from the searing heat. Any other witcher would be wary of walking barefoot into a pile of sizzling embers.

Geralt isn’t any other witcher.

He hops backwards, one step, two, and before the coals can burn him he’s away and in a crouch, eyes flicking between the Cat and his swords, but it’s already too obvious that he’s going to try to go for them again, so he swoops down, snags a half-burned log from the fire, and smashes it towards the Cat witcher’s wrist.

The other witcher hisses as his sleeve catches fire, struggling to put it out without burning his other hand, and Geralt makes for his packs. It’s easy enough to snag one of his extra daggers and turn to face the Cat as the other witcher approaches again, knife held carefully in a burned hand.

They circle, circle, clash, and the Cat rebounds away with a leap Geralt couldn’t possibly hope to match, still hissing. Why they had to pick _that_ particular mannerism from their patron animal he’ll never know. 

Geralt rotates, carefully, picking out his approach, dropping into an unusually low crouch, one hand held out to feel around himself. If he’s right, the Cat will try to maneuver, use his greater speed to his advantage-- the attack comes, flashing-quick in the darkness, and Geralt dodges, parries, and brings his other hand, gripping a large stone, around to smash into the Cat’s temple. 

The Cat drops, hard, and Geralt stands back, barely panting but with his heart _racing_ , the scratch on his collarbone bleeding freely and staining his shirt. He looks down at the other witcher, still out cold, then breathes in, searching for any trace of another witcher, someone else out there just in case he survived this attack. There’s nothing, but that’s not really reassuring. 

He sniffs the Cat’s dagger, then checks the scratch. It’ll hurt for a while, and the poison is definitely going to make him woozy for an hour or so, but he’ll be fine in the end.

So he sheathes his dagger, buries the fire, packs everything back up onto Roach, ties the other witcher to a tree tight enough that he shouldn’t be able to escape until the morning, and gets the fuck out of there. 

* * *

The next hunter comes a month after that. It’s another Cat this time, who confronts him in the middle of the road, and they trample the grass on both sides flat as they fight. The whole thing lasts until the sun is much, much lower in the sky, and the only reason Geralt wins is because he’s a Wolf and a freak, designed to just _keep fighting_ even after all others have dropped. Even other witchers. The Cat slows, slows, slips up on a parry, and Geralt steps in to lock hilts and disarm him, hooking his ankles so they both go down, Geralt on top with one knee on the other witcher’s chest. He brings the heavy pommel of his sword around to _thunk_ against the Cat’s temple, and leaves him bound to the nearest signpost with his own rope.

And then he runs away. 

He’s careful to keep his scent off the ground as much as possible, to not do anything that might be identified as “witcher” unless he’s got a good escape route and a way to hide it, but he still catches traces of another witcher following, has to ride hard in the middle of the night for the nearest river so he can splash through the shallows to hide his trail until Roach is nearly asleep on her feet.

He can’t give her even the meager comforts she’s used to; a decent stable once in a while and more to eat than grass, and while he tries to make it up to her with what treats he can find, he knows she’s not happy. She’s putting up with it, because she’s _Roach_ and Roach is, above everything else, a good friend and a good horse, but she’s not happy.

That’s the first thing that breaks his heart.

* * *

He gets used to it, to hiding his trail and his camps as carefully as possible, to always sleeping with one eye open, to not spending a night in an inn if he can help it. He spends that winter in the South, as far as he can make it before the chill starts to set in. He _could_ survive a Northern winter without shelter at an inn or Kaer Morhen (he’s done it before), but making for warmer weather is the one comfort he can still have that won’t get him trapped and killed and beheaded. 

And then before he knows it, it’s been a year since Blaviken, and he’s still being hunted down, still has to deal with the fallout of his mistake. The story’s spread, and while he slips by sometimes, other times the moment he walks into a town there’s someone shouting “Butcher!”, followed by a hail of stones. 

That’s the second thing that breaks his heart.

The bruises fade in a day (they always do), but the effect on his coinpurse is more noticeable. He barely has enough money to buy necessary supplies, and even with the general prevalence of game in the rural areas he’s been driven to, he rarely has enough to eat. His potions supply is down as well, the rarer herbs harder to find outside of cities or the witcher keeps, and he’s not taking enough high-profile contracts to get the more exotic ingredients.

He _does_ have a hell of a lot of drowner brains, though. 

He basically lives in his armor now, relying on it to protect him from a hidden blade in a tavern or a trap sprung along the road to try to catch him unawares. The constant use and little time to maintain it is starting to show in the way the stitching is coming undone, the straps wearing apart. It’d been old even before Blaviken, due for a replacement, but he hasn’t got the money to pay for it and it’s not like the Schools are going to give him one. 

So he stitches it up as best he can, salvages what he can of the silver studding, dyes the patches roughly black with saved ichor, and keeps moving. 

* * *

The next time he slips up, it’s a witcher that’s the closest thing he has to a friend (not a brother, just a friend); a Griffin named Rikard that he spent his errantry year with. He tries to reason with him, explain that he’s not feral, that Blaviken was an accident, that he never meant to kill all of them, but he’s always had a stone tongue and nothing of any value comes out.

Rikard nearly manages to kill him with a well-placed Aard and Igni, and it’s only his tougher-than-normal hide that saves him. He has to sacrifice the rerebracers of his armor, though; they’ve been scorched through. 

Eventually Rikard, overconfident in the strength of his Axii, comes close enough for Geralt to grab his wrist and it’s all over from there. He does have to break the other witcher’s hand to keep him from casting signs, but broken bones heal.

As he rides away, he grits his teeth and tries to tune out the profanity echoing from where Rikard is bound to a large rock; he’s got a worse mouth than what’s-his-name, Lambert, when he puts his mind to it. But with Lambert, at least, you know it’s rarely directed at you personally, while the things that Rikard is shouting are designed to cut _deep_.

“Monster! They should’ve killed you when they had the chance! I don’t know _why_ they didn’t take a knife to your throat after Gweld, but I’ll tell you, you should’a done it yourself! ‘S what you deserve, you _freak_!”

He has skin that’s as tough as any leather armor. A heart that beats four times slower and four times stronger than any mortal man’s. He’s a witcher raised and trained, guided ever since he can remember to be the perfect monster-killer. This shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, but the hatred of one he called friend, that he sparred with and talked with and daydreamed about the Path with during his errantry year is the third thing that breaks his heart.

He grits his teeth and walks away.

The years go by, same as always (only everything’s different) and he gets better at shaking the witchers that catch his trail so he doesn’t have to fight them at all, doesn’t have to listen to them shout bitter poison at him, doesn’t have to break their hands or their noses or their wrists to try to keep them from coming after him. 

Doesn’t stop them, though; whatever combination of personal grudges and Council reward is driving them, it’s enough to keep them coming year after year after bleak and barren _year_. Rikard shows up another time, and then another, and Geralt finally gets so fed up with him that he _shatters_ every bone in his hand. It’ll heal, but he won’t be casting signs or holding a sword with his left for a _long_ time.

He doesn’t feel anything as he does it, even as Rikard screams and curses his name and threatens bitter vengeance, a note of panic in his voice that he’s never heard before, the sour stench of fear following him even as he rides away.

He also doesn’t sleep that night.

Sometimes he thinks, idly, about doing something more serious. Cutting off an ear, or a limb. Leaving a message that he doesn’t want to be fucked with, and anyone who might try is going to get _hurt_. It remains an idle thought, though; he could never do that to another witcher. Snapping a bone is hard enough, and that heals in a month or so.

And any kind of maiming would only get the High Council’s full attention, and that means they’d send out their dog. 

Sometimes he thinks about taking one of his own knives to his throat, of finding a kikimora or a bruxa or a lindorm and letting it win instead. Just to stop it all, to rob whoever finds his body of the bounty money, but something always stays his hand. So he sheathes his knife instead, and stares into the fire, and wonders what kind of a witcher he’d have been if they never decided to make him a _freak_.

He keeps running, and he keeps fighting, and he takes what contracts people are willing to give him, but there’re fewer and fewer towns that haven’t heard of him, that don’t have another witcher sniffing around for any trace of him, that have people willing to pay a witcher that looks like he does. Easier, after all, to wait for one who isn’t the infamous Butcher of Blaviken. He ends up running further south than ever before, even dipping into Ebbing, where witchers are seen as charlatans at best and beasts to be put down at worst.

Food is harder to find, and his armor is barely good enough to save him from a dull kitchen knife, much less another witcher’s sword, and he’s not had a proper bath in what feels like years (it might very well be years) and yet there’s _nothing he can fucking do about it_.

So he just keeps going.

And his heart is a thing with as many holes as a Kaedweni cheese, but it’s still going, though it’s been broken into half-a-dozen shards that cut him as he breathes, though it leaks blood into his chest with every beat; so much so that half the time he’s drowning, gasping for air against the weight of all the mistakes he’s made. He really is a monster now, unfeeling; he’s hurt his own kin, gone half-mad with the isolation. He doesn’t care what they do to him anymore (only that’s not true, is it), so long as he survives just that little while longer.

He doesn’t see the point anymore.

Geralt keeps moving, keeps looking for contracts though they grow scarcer and scarcer. The time he can spend in one town before he’s driven off by stones or armed men or the threat of another witcher in the area grows smaller and smaller.

And then he’s spending most of his time hungry, eating what he can catch (mostly rabbit, and he’s barely staving off fat starvation with what cheese and butter he can buy), and his armor is reduced to a haphazardly-patched leather shirt and pair of pauldrons, and although he’s gotten good at avoiding other witchers, they still find him now and again. Once, memorably, in the middle of a contract, where they’d nearly gotten him killed by a basilisk before he slew the thing and fought them off. He hasn’t seen a friendly face since Eskel showed up to warn him about the Council’s decision, and it’s wearing on him more than he’d care to say. 

And it’s been seven fucking years of this shit, and he’s tired. He’s just. . . he’s tired. All the time. Whether he’s fighting drowners or negotiating his pay with the alderman staring surreptitiously at his teeth or waking up in the middle of the night to _yet another_ assassination attempt, he’s tired. There’s been a dozen or more over the years, all of them hard-fought and hard-won battles that have left him with more new scars than contracts have, recently, and for once in his life he just wants to get a half-decent night’s sleep without worrying about the rumor he didn’t hear, or the poison he didn’t smell, or the yellow eyes he didn’t see coming. 

But there’s nothing he can do about it except keep going.

So he keeps going. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! So because I now have a couple of other projects going on, there's probably going to be a bit of a longer wait for the next chapter as well. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> EDIT: Based on the tone of the stuff I have written in my buffer now, I've changed the rating of the fic to mature, and it miiiiiiiiiight change to explicit in, like, two years. Once the slow burn gets resolved. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! Sorry about the long wait y'all, school hit me over the head and I've gotten barely any writing done at _all_. A big big thank you to [StarsInMyDamnEyes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarsInMyDamnEyes/pseuds/StarsInMyDamnEyes), [Khansen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KHansen/pseuds/KHansen), [Bamf_Jaskier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bamf_Jaskier/pseuds/Bamf_Jaskier), [teamfreehoodies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamfreehoodies/pseuds/teamfreehoodies), and the entirety of the Witcher!Jaskier server for their support and I hope you enjoy!  
> Warning for a little bit of gore at the end of Julian's fight scene; if that's not your thing, feel free to skip from "Julian wastes a fraction of a second" to the scene break!

The next attack comes when he’s camping out in a swamp.

Well, sort of a swamp. It’s a spot in Kovir that becomes a swamp in summer, but right now, in the late fall, it’s just a large half-frozen patch of mud and sickly trees. He’s not even out here for a contract; he’s camping here because _no one else_ wants to camp here, and therefore it’s the best place he can think of for going unnoticed. It’s freezing and stinking and Roach is (justifiably) pissed at him for eight years of no stables and no apples or corn or anything other than dry grass from the side of the road, but no one will think to look for him here.

Maybe.

Someone’s been tailing him for the past few months, and no matter what he does, how far he runs, how well he covers his tracks, they find him again and just. . . lurk. They sit in the background, and wait for him to slip up, while he struggles for coin and spends hours backtracking and laying false trails and gets stoned out of three separate towns. They’re waiting for the moment that he’ll be too tired, too worn out to fight back, and then they’ll strike.

He has a sick feeling in his guts (that he’s been ignoring) that he knows _exactly_ who they are, and part of him is honestly relieved that it’s over, that the High Council’s finally gotten fed up with chasing him all over the Continent and has finally decided to end this idiotic game of cat and mouse.

He still casts Yrden in a wide circle around his campsite, and doesn’t bother removing his bags from Roach in case they need to flee in the middle of the night. She hates him a little bit more for it, and all he can offer her in return is a pat on the nose and a whispered “sorry, girl”.

He can _feel_ her judging him. 

He dozes for a bit, always on the alert for sound and motion around him, but there’s nothing. It’s _always_ nothing.

Right up to the point when it _isn’t_ and he has to lunge for his swords as a thin streak of silver comes whistling down towards his head. He rolls out of the way, up and onto his feet in the low light, scanning for whoever-it-is, only to be blinded by a whistling flare, accompanied by a brilliant white flash that leaves him unable to see for a long moment. The flare is followed by a rolling cloud of smoke that envelops him, muddling his nose and making his eyes sting and burn, as something darts silent and razor-quick around him, only the rush of air and moving swirl of smoke to give away his presence. It’s thick and slightly sweet-smelling; some kind of chemical present, one that makes him slow, uncoordinated. It’d knock out any other witcher within a few moments. As it stands, he’s got a bare few minutes to _move_ before he’s down.

The smoke swirls, thick and dense. It’s moving. . . _against_ the wind--

He barely manages to get his sword up in time for a parry, warned by the incoming rush of air, and their swords ring and clatter before his mysterious opponent disengages and wafts away into the smoke. 

He can’t see. Can’t smell. He can only barely hear anything other than the wind (by the gods, this thing moves silently). He’s blind and deaf and dumb, spinning wildly as he tries to prepare for his next attack.

He knows who this is. 

There’s another flash, this one accompanied by a rolling _boom_ that thuds against the sensitive workings of his ears, strong enough that another couple of those might actually be enough to make him bleed. The ground vibrates slightly, a strong step to ground someone for a powerful blow, and he dances out of reach of the strike, testing with the tip of his sword to try to find out where his opponent is.

His killer, more likely. He _knows who this is_. 

He needs to get out of this _fucking smoke_ , so he darts backwards, trusting his prior knowledge of the area and the sensitive soles of his bare feet to keep him from tripping over anything. At least the dead grass frozen into the muck gives him good purchase, enough to move easily without slipping.

The High Council’s finally gotten fed up. Just like he knew they would. 

His attacker drifts out of the cloud of smoke to disappear between the sparse trees. Geralt catches a glimpse of black leathers and darkened steel armbands that flash in the starlight (his eyes are improving, good), before they’re gone, back to hiding in the shadows.

The Council’s attack dog is here, and he’s not going to survive this.

No one does.

He risks darting towards Roach and his potions, managing to snag a handful before he has to dodge another swipe out of fucking _nowhere_. Black Blood, not helpful, Cat, yes, Golden Oriole, maybe, Killer Whale, no; he picks out the ones that might be some kind of help and downs them all at once, gagging at the taste. He can’t help grimacing as they hit his throat and start to _burn,_ but he’s begun to match what the other witcher has undoubtedly already done.

His senses ramp up to almost-unbearable levels, and he sure as hell hopes that the other witcher doesn’t try to use another flash-bang, but now he can see even into the dark spaces at the edges of his vision, the shadows underneath the frozen ridges and pits of the sometimes-swamp.

There’s a flash of metal, blackened-steel-and-silver, and he dodges again, letting the other witcher overextend so he can chop at their arm with his off hand, throwing them to the ground. The other witcher rolls with the movement, hooking Geralt’s ankles, and he goes down onto the frozen muck, sword falling from his hand with the force of it.

He surges to his feet, groping for the dagger he wears strapped to his thigh at all times now, and lunges for the other witcher, letting his strike sink into Geralt’s forearm, so far it grates against bone and gets _stuck_.

Geralt twists, gropes in under the other man’s guard, knocking his hand down, and rips his dagger up the other man’s chest, but the angle’s all wrong and it skates over the ribs, not even making it through the other man’s armor.

They literally pull apart, the other witcher’s shortsword grating over the bone and cutting deep (he’s going to have to watch for marrow poisoning from that), and they both spin away, Geralt going for his sword, the other witcher trying to stop him. He’s bleeding heavily now, and if he doesn’t finish this up soon, he’ll be too dizzy from bloodloss to fight back. 

He catches up his sword and moves in again, going on the offensive. Only way if he wants to make it out alive. That bit with the dagger was a stupid _, stupid_ move; he gave up his uninjured state for _nothing_. He’s getting slow.

The other witcher steps, pivots, rebounds off Geralt’s parry, and moves in just far enough that Geralt can get inside his reach and slam his _other_ emergency dagger straight through the outside of the assassin’s thigh, deep enough to make the point come out the other side. Any movement will shift the blade and rip the wound open wider, wide enough to bleed to death. Without careful handling, it’s mortal. 

He catches a glimpse of wide black eyes in the darkness before he’s falling back with sudden warmth all along his stomach. He looks down, and there’s a cleverly palmed dagger held lightly to the bottom of his ribcage, just above a gash wide enough that his own intestines are starting to spill from it. 

They both freeze, looking down at the slow waterfall of blood and the rising bulges of grey intestine, and then Geralt gives the dagger in the other man’s leg a _wrench_ , changing it from maybe-mortal to _probably-fatal_ , shoves him away, wraps his hand around his own belly and runs for Roach.

The wind has finally changed, and even as it blows away the last remnants of the smoke bomb, it brings him a noseful of the Council’s Shadow’s smell, blood and potions and the chemical stink of witcher mutagens, and under that something sweet and sorrowful and a little bit, just a little bit, lonely. 

* * *

Geralt of Rivia is _infuriating_.

At least, that’s the impression Julian gets when he heads back to Gorthur Gvaed for the winter, though he’s never met the man and he _certainly_ has no intention of trying to collect the bounty on his head. Still, he’s all some of his brothers can talk about, the way he’s unnaturally skilled at losing a tail, the way he leaves those who try to hunt him and fail tied up in the woods. Only ten or so witchers have gotten close enough to touch him, and he’s managed to knock out and slip away from all of them. Quite impressive, really, if you think about it. Darius is _still_ mad about his cracked skull, though it’s long healed and he’s not even got brain damage from it. (Not that you could _tell_ , of course.)

Julian does his best to stay far, _far_ away from discussions concerning Geralt of Rivia. Because he _knows_ what’s going to happen, and it’s _not_ going to be pretty, and he’s going to have to drink himself to sleep every night for a year afterwards, and he _doesn’t_ want to think about it, thank you very much. He’s perfectly happy just being a witcher on the Path, not... what it is the High Council wants him to be.

So he goes out, and he fights whatever he can find for coin, and if the villagers are a little more distrustworthy of him than they were before, well, that’s not _his_ fault, now is it. 

Seven years pass, though he wouldn’t have known it; his daily life never changes that much anyways, and he’s not old enough to start complaining about spelling yet.

And then the Council calls him in. 

The ride up to Kaer Duchan, with its imposing towers looming high over the land like some unknowable monarch, starts a knot of dread swelling in his gut until it _chokes_ him, tangles cold fingers around his heart and lungs and limbs and leaves him shaking, but he is a witcher trained if not born and he keeps walking up the stairs.

The High Council is seated at their half-moon table, looking not a day different from the last time he saw them like this, skulking in the shadows at the meeting to determine Geralt of Rivia’s fate, ready to kill anyone who might be dangerous, who might be a threat to the Councilmembers. He’d had his sights trained on Master Vesemir for most of that meeting, but the order never came and he’d set down his crossbow with a sigh of relief.

Now he stands before them, dressed not in armor but plain witcher blacks, ungloved, unhooded, unmasked. For now, at least, he is still Julian the Viper, and nothing more.

“Geralt of Rivia needs to be taken down,” Master Iveth starts, without preamble, and Julian bows.

“Any particular way?” and oh, he _hates_ the way his voice goes smooth and cold. It doesn’t sound like him at _all_ , all chill and professional and _subservient_.

“Whichever way you want, just _bring us his fucking_ _head_ ,” Samuel snarls, fists clenching on the smooth wood. Julian bows again.

“You have a year,” Iveth says, calm and final as a rock dropping into water. Julian dips his head and turns to leave. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t _get_ to ask questions. He doesn’t get to protest, or to ask for more time, or to ask why they chose _him_ , of all people, to do this. 

He’s only their attack dog, after all.

* * *

He spends _months_ tailing Geralt, following rumors of a white-haired witcher, stories of the Butcher of Blaviken in one town or another. It takes him nearly six weeks to get anything resembling a solid lead, but this is what he’s been trained for ever since he survived the Trials alone, and he tracks Geralt north, where he’s moving quickly, carefully, _silently_.

Geralt’s _good,_ is the thing. He knows every trick in the book for how to lose somebody, and quite a few that _aren’t_. Well, he _has_ had eight years to practice, after all. Still, it’s a careful game: how long can you trail Geralt of Rivia without him spotting you or you losing him?

Once upon a time, he might have liked this kind of game, might have enjoyed the challenge of it, the careful give and take between the participants. Like chess, only with fewer pieces. And more subterfuge. And no control over anything but the kings. And one king is trying to get away while the other chases him, and-- okay, so maybe it’s not like chess at all. 

Still, he could find it fun. If he had the heart in him to find it fun. He hasn’t had a decent test of his skills in _ages_ ; ghouls aren’t exactly known for their intelligence. It could be _fun_.

But he knows how this game is going to end, and that’s what just sort of-- sucks all the joy out of it. Because there’s no way that Geralt’s getting out of this alive. And while he might be a witcher and the Council’s Shadow, he doesn’t-- _like_ killing. Not even a little bit. Hates it, in fact, always has. He might be taking down a graveir, or some poor werewolf that never asked to be cursed, and instead of how many people this thing’s killed, or how many people he’ll save by taking it out now, or even how he’s simply putting it out of its misery, all he can think about is how much he doesn’t want to be there, how he wants to be cozying up somewhere next to a warm fire with a good book and something resembling a friend. Maybe a lover -- he’s never really had a _lover_ before. He thinks it might be nice, to have one.

His point is, he doesn’t want to kill Geralt. Never even _met_ the man, and already he wants to save his life. But the High Council has its hooks in him, little barbed things that drag him back onto the Path every time he tries to slip free, holding him to whatever course they might set him. All they have to do is say his name and his own School will turn on him, along with every other witcher out there. No one likes the Council’s dog, after all, and the fact that he’s murdered witchers on the High Council’s command is enough to get him an immediate death sentence from-- well, _everyone_. So he’ll go out there and find the Butcher, and he’ll kill him, and his name will stay safe and he’ll go back to his three comforts and the _ringing_ loneliness and he’ll-- survive, he supposes. 

Just survive. 

He spends seven months waiting for Geralt to move into position, using that time to set up his inventory for their confrontation. Flash-bang bombs, check, smoke bombs laced with chemicals strong enough to knock out a witcher, boomers to throw out his hearing and balance, hopefully. He plots out how he’s going to do this: catch him while he’s sleeping, disorient him with the bombs, and move in for the kill. If he plans this out right, he’ll be in and out before anyone can register more than thunder in the distance, and he’ll be back in Kaer Duchan within the month with Geralt’s head in a sack. 

That thought makes him oddly sad, so he pushes it aside and focuses on trailing Geralt to the north, up into the frozen northern realms. Even after the _summer_ , they’re fucking _freezing_ , the ground frozen _solid_ when he tries to sleep on it. But he doesn’t have the money for an inn -- no time to take contracts, not with Geralt being _unfairly_ good at hiding his trail, seriously, no one should be able to practically _disappear_ like that, it takes him _weeks_ to find him again -- so he sleeps on the ground and misses the little bit of comfort he’s eked out of this life. 

And then Geralt makes camp for the night in the middle of the local swamp, which is currently frozen over because fucking _Kovir_ , and Julian, tired of this chase, moves in for the kill.

* * *

Geralt flashes out of the way of his sword with a single easy movement, rolling out of his blankets fluidly, and-- that’s why they call him _freak_ , isn’t it, the way he moves, the way he looks, even as he’s dropping into a crouch, steel longsword held easily, teeth bared.

It’s not something a human might notice, but to a witcher, he moves just a _bit_ too fluidly, has eyes that glitter just a _bit_ too golden, too luminous in the dark, pupils too narrow for the light level. His teeth flash white when he snarls, razor-edged and… _fangy_ , his skin too smoothly pale to be natural (it’s rather beautiful in the moonlight -- _no_ , Julian. No falling in lust with the fucking _target_.)

There’s nothing that you could point out, could say ‘this is what makes a freak, let’s all laugh at him,’ but he’s just... _other_. A little further from human than the rest of them, a little closer to the wild, and it’s easy to see why all the rest are scared. This is man who could take on gods and demons and armies without a hair out of place, and it makes something in Julian’s chest flutter to watch him move with that easy grace, anxiety or fear or raw _desire_ \--

He throws the first flash-bang to distract himself, followed by one of the smoke bombs, and gulps down the antidote to the toxin before he can breathe any in, tugging his mask up over his nose and mouth. He knows how this fight ends.

He slips into the smoke, darting this way and that to set it to swirling, hiding his movements before he lunges in for the killing blow, but Geralt somehow gets his sword up in time to parry, which-- _how?_ How the _fuck_ \-- Julian can smell him through the smoke, he’s got a Viper nose and Cat burning through his veins, ramping his senses up almost past his tolerance, but Geralt--

 _Geralt_ is throwing himself back and out of the smoke, which, hang on a second, _should have knocked him out by now_! He’s-- it’s not -- what-- _what the hell did they_ **_do_ ** _to him?_

The smoke obviously isn’t working, so Julian calls on all that lovely Viper speed and makes a break for the trees, letting his dark armor and the lack of light hide him among the trees while he recalculates. When he looks back, Geralt of Rivia is _not_ beheaded in the night, _not_ unconscious from the smoke bomb, and _very_ pissed off. At _Julian_ , specifically. 

Geralt makes a break for his horse, who is untethered but still staying close -- he should probably train Pegasus to do that, but horses have never _listened_ to him, exactly -- Geralt is gulping down at least three different potions, _shit_.

Julian lunges, giving up on finesse in favor of speed, hoping to overwhelm the other witcher, but Geralt twists to the side, easy, like they’re fucking _dancing,_ and Julian overextends enough that Geralt slams his hand down onto his wrist and nearly knocks him to the ground -- Melitele’s _tits_ , he’s _strong_ \-- and Julian hooks his ankles, bringing them both down onto the frozen mud.

Geralt, of course, because his reflexes are fucking ridiculous, surges right back up to his feet, not bothering to reach for his fallen sword and instead going for a knife still strapped to his hip (does he sleep with that thing on?). Julian chops at him, just trying to buy time, and he blocks with his forearm, the steel biting straight through the muscle to grate against bone and it gets _stuck_. 

Julian wastes a fraction of a second trying to get his sword free, and it’s enough space for Geralt to make a wild swipe at his ribs that skates along his armor, not even leaving a mark. Julian smirks and pulls away, dragging his sword what has to be halfway through the other witcher’s radius ( _t_ _hat’ll_ give him marrow poisoning, see if it doesn’t). They spin away from each other, Geralt bleeding heavily from his arm, and Julian starts planning. If he rebounds there, drags him inside, palms this dagger--

Hot pain shoots through his leg, but he ignores it and drags his dagger straight through the thin fabric of Geralt’s shirt and into his body cavity, feeling the pressure release along his knife as all the man’s guts lose their containment.

It’s enough to make him _sick_. 

He looks down at the gaping wound, waterfalling blood and greyish intestines -- it doesn’t stink, he didn’t cut through, it won’t go septic, there are _some_ small mercies left in this world after all -- Geralt gives the dagger in Julian’s leg a vicious twist, making white-hot pain flash through his body, scoops up his sword and runs for his horse, even as Julian lies there on the ground, trying not to black out with pain and bloodloss.

* * *

Geralt spends three days in a grain field stitching up his gut wound. The intestines themselves weren’t cut, but it stretches all the way from the bottom of his ribcage on his left to the right point of his hip, a gaping slash that’s one of the biggest he’s ever taken. He uses up nearly his entire supply of Kiss trying to stop the bleeding (he doesn’t know why he bothers).

As soon as he can ride, he runs. _Where_ doesn’t matter, only how far, and he’s pretty sure even running to the bottom of Nilfgaard might not save him. So he disappears off the grid, not travelling on roads at all, not popping up in any place with humans until he reaches what has to be the edge of the world and a tiny fucking town where the people haven’t seen a witcher in years and just sort of. . . _stare_ at him. They don’t seem to realize that his appearance isn’t exactly normal, or that his armor is shit compared to what the other witchers wear. There’re few jobs out here, so he just drifts until he ends up in a town called Posada, with unusual architecture and fuck-all else to its name besides a couple of grain fields.

He ends up in the tavern, nursing the single mug of ale that was all he was able to afford, thinking about where to go from here. He’s heard there might be work to the north, but going back into populated areas is a risk he isn’t willing to take now or ever, and while he’s gotten lucky for nearly nine years, the Council’s attack dog isn’t something you get lucky with _twice_.

He doesn’t bother telling himself that he’s killed the other witcher. The Council’s Shadow is known for his ability to get anywhere, kill anyone, no matter what. A dagger through the leg isn’t going to be enough to stop him. 

His heart has turned into a little raw lump that he’s encased in cold iron to try to protect it, just a little bit, from the reality of what’s coming next. His only concerns are enough coin to keep himself a live a little longer (though why he bothers he doesn’t know) and whatever rumors there may be of another witcher in the area.

His life is shit, right now. Pure, unadulterated shit.

And the bard just starting to sing over in the corner isn’t making anything any better. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so because of schoolwork and stuff, updates are going to be a lot slower than they used to be. I'm not stopping this story, not until it's done, but I just don't have as much time to write as I used to. So thank you thank you to everyone who's following fwm.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got something of a buffer, right now, but this will definitely be posted fairly irregularly. I will do my absolute best to finish it, though.  
> Come visit me at my [Tumblr](https://storm-and-starlight.tumblr.com/)!  
> If you have any questions about the story, world, or just, like, random shit, hit me up in my askbox and/or in the comments; I'll do my best to answer them! (No spoilers, though. Sorry:) )  
> As always, comments, kudos, and other forms of appreciation will be given a warm and loving home :)


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